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The Smart Growth Network (SGN) is a national alliance of advocates, practitioners, policymakers, and local leaders working towards a shared vision for land use and infrastructure policies and actions that result in healthy, sustainable, and prosperous communities for all. The Network holds quarterly discussions on a variety of topics related to smart growth, such as resilient, affordable housing and smart growth for rural places. Our March 19th discussion focused on the importance of local partnerships in collecting, understanding, and utilizing data, and how this work influences research, investment, and more.

Moderator Kathy Pettit (Urban Institute) began the discussion by introducing the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, a program of Urban Institute that helps local communities use data to shape their strategies and investments by connecting communities to partner organizations in 31 cities across the country. Panelists Dr. Elizabeth Ackley (Roanoke College), Michael Moser (University of Vermont), and Peter Tatian (Urban Institute) joined for a roundtable discussion. Dr. Ackley is the director of the Center for Community Health Innovation at Roanoke College and directs the Roanoke Valley Community Healthy Living Index, Moser is a research specialist at the Center for Rural Studies and coordinates the State’s Census State Data Center, and Tatian is the research director of Urban–Greater DC.

The breadth of their experience, as well as the range of geographies their work covers, led to an engaging conversation about the various projects they’ve worked on and the lessons learned from their work. Tatian described the use of data in the 11th Street Bridge Park project in DC’s Anacostia neighborhood, where sharing data with community members helped build trust in the project and attracted more funding for equitable development. Dr. Ackley shared Melrose Plaza, a neighborhood resource hub that was informed by health data indicators and other metrics to ensure the development met the needs of those who could most benefit, in part through long-term collaboration. Moser described how his organization works on more short-term projects, helping clients learn about particular topics and turn local anecdotes into knowledge and data through research that brings community members, experts, and other stakeholders together.

The panel included some helpful recommendations for community organizations and data or research organizations looking to start collaborating:

• Clarify goals and priorities from the beginning. Identifying shared visions will help establish opportunities for working together. Are you looking to collect more information? Or make existing information easier to use?
• Be creative in your partnerships. Communities might look beyond land grant institutions: there are a lot of benefits to working with smaller academic institutions, such as less pressure on scholars to publish and more local familiarity. Research organizations should seek out existing coalitions, conveners, or even local urban planners to start to figure out who to talk to within these data organizations.
• Keep an open mind! There is always something to learn from a local community, no matter how deeply the topic or area has already been studied. And be flexible: some questions can’t be answered with a direct data measurement, so partners may have ideas to identify adjacent information or proxies to learn what you’re looking for.

Data resources

• Community First Toolkit provides a series of tools to use for more equitable development practices, from Urban Institute, Grayscale Collaborative, and the High Line Network.
• Investing in Data Capacity for Community Change is a brief from Urban Institute that includes the community capacity framework.
• Urban Institute’s catalog of national small-area data files compiles datasets and tools below the scale of the city level.
• Learn more about community health in Roanoke in this interview with Dr. Ackley and lessons learned from the Invest Health project.
• Learn more about Urban-DC’s work on 11th Street Bridge Park Equitable Development.