Neighborhood information empowers change in Connecticut, elsewhere
By Mike Meotti, Connecticut Policy and Economic Council
The
City Scan program is rapidly
becoming a comprehensive tool kit for neighborhoods to collect previously
unavailable information that residents and community-based nonprofits
can use to improve their community. City Scan deploys inner city high
school students in part time jobs or as volunteers to gather information
at the street level using handheld computers, digital cameras, and
other technology. The information is then used to create reports,
maps, and other planning and advocacy tools. Students "re-scan"
the same streets weeks or months later to measure the change in conditions.
City Scan has worked for four years on "visually observable
conditions" such as abandoned buildings, illegal dumping, unsafe
park conditions and much more. 
But
this powerful tool is now branching out to support surveys for other
issues such as public health, housing, voter registration and outreach
efforts. City Scan can be used to collect information not otherwise
available, or not available on a defined neighborhood basis. This
scope of work is now expanding into survey work based on interviewing
residents, so the policy subject matter is wide open, and not limited
to visually observable conditions.
Two
specific projects that are in various stages in Hartford which will
expand our work to such new issues include a very complex set of housing
conditions for a community development initiative and a children's access
to health care effort.
We are currently working with other local groups, including Chicago;
Iowa; York, PA; and pilots in Georgia, Ohio, and California. We are
assisting these groups with online GIS tools & other remote support
in order to map their data without having to develop in-house expertise
or buy expensive, complex software. A demonstration
site on the web can now be explored that shows City Scan indicators
from the summer of 2003.
Organizations or community foundations interested in implementing
City Scan in their community are welcome to contact us for further
details. You may also visit the project's website at www.city-scan.com.
Mike Meotti
Mike.Meotti@cpec.org
Phone: 860-493-7610
www.cpec.org