Community Indicators for Your Community

Real, lasting community change is built around knowing where you are, where you want to be, and whether your efforts are making a difference. Indicators are a necessary ingredient for sustainable change. And the process of selecting community indicators -- who chooses, how they choose, what they choose -- is as important as the data you select.

This is an archive of thoughts I had about indicators and the community indicators movement. Some of the thinking is outdated, and many of the links may have broken over time.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Census Plus Released

Here's a heads-up from our friends at Brookings:

We wanted to let you know about a recently updated interactive web application on the Brookings Metro Program website.


Census Plus
is a one-of-a-kind data tool that provides up-to-date demographic, social, economic, and housing data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, including information from Census 2000 and the 2005, 2006, and 2007 American Community Survey. Census Plus enables users to:

Generate comparative rankings on more than 100 key indicators for the 100 largest U.S. cities, counties, and metropolitan areas, and all 50 states … view data “at a glance” for their community, and see how their city/county/metro area/state ranks against all others across a range of indicators within a particular topic … and create their own indicators for these subject areas by downloading the raw data used in the application.

Census Plus is a useful tool for elected officials, community leaders, civic and philanthropic organizations, research groups, journalists, and the general public to answer important questions about the places in which they work and live. The latest version of Census Plus, along with more detailed information and tips on how to use the site, is available here: http://www.brookings.edu/metro/Living-Cities/census-plus.aspx. If you have any questions or feedback about Census Plus, please contact Elizabeth Kneebone.

(Hat tip: National Association of Planning Councils)

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