Abstract:
In an environment when funding for community development is declining and research is
proving the effectiveness of targeted redevelopment strategies, it is critical for planners and community
development organizations to have data relevant to community revitalization. This paper explains
the development of and tests the effectiveness of a user friendly web-application to view
neighborhood indicators at the census tract level. Using the existing literature related to neighborhood
indicators, particularly work by Galster, et. al (2005), the author has developed an application
that can be useful to everyone from planners to neighborhood organizations to neighborhood residents.
To test the effectiveness of the application, it is used to find neighborhoods of disinvestment
near neighborhoods of investment. Those neighborhoods are then explored using the web-app to
determine if they are good candidates for community development investment. The application is
successful in identifying three key neighborhoods as candidates for investment. The most exciting
aspect of this tool is its universal quality. The data and methods used can be easily replicated for any
city of county in the country.
