Neighborhood Opportunity

Overview

Over the past few years, NCSG has been actively engaged in projects related to issues of neighborhood opportunity. That is, the ways in which neighborhoods help to shape the access that individuals and communities have to various kinds of educational, employment, health or other opportunities that can improve their long-term prospects. We have been particularly concerned with how “opportunity mapping” can be used to document and alleviate the barriers that disadvantaged communities face to accessing opportunities within their neighborhoods and around their metropolitan regions. Through a better understanding of the spatial structure of opportunity and how communities understand and navigate this structure, our research hopes to advance community development efforts as well as regional plans and policies designed to address such disparities.

In related projects, we have been involved in creating and assessing the effectiveness of opportunity and equity maps as well as plans, policies, and community-based development efforts that have emerged from them at the regional, state, and national level. We have also worked with communities as part of our efforts to show how community engagement in opportunity mapping and data collection processes can improve plans and policies to provide low-income communities’ greater access to opportunity.

Sponsors

Partners

Resources

Contacts

Willow Lung-Amam

Casey Dawkins

Gerrit Knaap

Chao Liu