Memphis

Institutional Setting

The Center for Community Building and Neighborhood Action (CBANA), housed in the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy at The University of Memphis, grew out of individual faculty interests in community-based research and partnerships. CBANA "links university research with community action," with an emphasis on "researcher-practitioner collaboration, partnerships with community-based organizations, and citizen engagement through participatory research."

CBANA is the lead Memphis partner for the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership at The Urban Institute, where the emphasis is on innovative uses of local data to inform civic engagement and drive social change and problem-solving. CBANA is developing the InfoWorks Memphis Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, a web-based community and neighborhood indicators system with a special emphasis on parcel-based local data and neighborhood level analysis of risks and assets in ten topical domains. As the local innovator in transforming public records and other data to create actionable knowledge (often in partnership with the Center for Community Criminology and Research),  CBANA not only collects and integrates local data with national datasets, but works alongside a well established set of partners from public sector, non-profit, and community-based grassroots organizations to design, implement, and fine-tune data-driven civic engagement and problem-solving strategies. CBANA has taken the lead with parcel-based analysis and GIS mapping for initiatives as varied as foreclosure mitigation and neighbor stabilization to infant mortality and early childhood development.  For example, findings from the recent NNIP cross-site initiative on early childhood/school readiness assets and risks (the Annie E. Casey Foundation) are mobilizing a “reaching families where they live” strategy for community outreach and site-based organizing and services in low-income apartment communities. Working with lead partner the Center for Community Criminology and Research, CBANA is also involved with strategic data analysis for community safety, long term crime prevention, and youth development. CBANA Director Phyllis Betts is the research partner for recently funded federal initiatives including the Defending Childhood Initiative (DOJ), the Teen Pregnancy and Parenting Success initiative (HHS), and the National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention (HHS).

Signature products include neighborhood profiles and asset maps in conjunction with various community and neighborhood initiatives, a "problem properties audit" protocol for use by community groups, neighborhood effects analysis for HOPE VI sites, and most recently the design and implementation of the "Property Transfer Database" - a key tool for CBANA's Neighborhood Housing Markets Modeling Project, supported by the Brookings Institution's Urban Markets Initiative. The PTD uses public records in new ways to uncover the micro and macro dynamics of neighborhood housing markets (with a special emphasis on the role of predatory lending and foreclosure), and is being piloted in both a transitional neighborhood and a more classically depressed neighborhood. Findings from the PTD are driving the Southeast Memphis Initiative, a comprehensive community initiative emerging from collaborative discussions among community-based stakeholders, city government, non-profits, CBANA, SUAPP's Center for Community Criminology, and other SUAPP faculty. CBANA is also involved in survey research on bankruptcy (with the Memphis DEBTS Collaborative) and a cohort study of neighborhood effects on early childhood development (with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and The Urban Child Institute.)

InfoWorks Memphis and the Shared Urban Data System

The neighborhood emphasis of the Brookings project and other initiatives is a natural springboard for a more comprehensive set of community and neighborhood indicators. Ten topical areas are under continued development for systematic web-based dissemination and framing toward actionable knowledge. InfoWorks Memphis Community and Neighborhood Indicators is based on government data such as Census and American Community Survey, American Housing Survey, and Home Mortgage Disclosure Act; local administrative records such as those from the Memphis Housing Authority and Division of Housing and Community Development and the Memphis Police Department Incident-Based Reporting System (in conjunction with the Center for Community Criminology); and primary data collection through the Problem Properties Audit and the Mid-South Survey (a project of the Center for Community Criminology.)

The platform for InfoWorks Memphis is the University of Memphis-designed and hosted Shared Urban Data System (SUDS), which houses a number of stand-alone data resources (both public access and password protected) and which includes GIS mapping and other interactive capabilities.