The Urban Portal

---

---

---

American Planning Association (APA)

APA is an independent, not-for-profit educational organization that provides leadership in the development of vital communities. The American Planning Association was created in 1978 by the consolidation of two separate planning organizations, but its roots go all the way back to 1909 and the first National Conference on City Planning in Washington, D.C.

Filed under: Organizations

---

Annual Population Survey UK

Economic and Social Data Service
The Annual Population Survey (APS) represents a major survey which comprises key variables from the Labour Force Survey (LFS), all the LFS boosts and the APS boost. For the first time the APS will provide survey data that can produce reliable estimates at local authority level. Key topics in the survey include education, employment, health and ethnicity.

The APS combines results from five different sources: the Labour Force Survey; the English Local Labour Force Survey; the Welsh Labour Force Survey; the Scottish Labour Force Survey; and the Annual Population Survey Boost Sample.

Filed under: Data

---

Assisted Housing: National and Local

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
Picture of Subsidized Households describes the households living in HUD-subsidized housing in the United States for the year providing data from the 1970s through 2008. There is information describing the characteristics of assisted housing units and residents, summarized at various levels, including: national, state, public housing agency (PHA), project, census tract, county, Core-Based Statistical Area and city levels.

Filed under: Data

---

Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management (APPAM)

The Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving public policy and management by fostering excellence in research, analysis and education.  With over 1,500 academic, practitioner, organizational and institutional members, APPAM promotes its mission through the annual Fall Research Conference, with the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM), the association's journal, several award programs and various activites including international and national conferences and workshops.

Filed under: Organizations

---

Black Metropolis Research Consortium

Columbia College, Chicago Public Library, Chicago History Museum, Chicago State University, DePaul University, Dominican University, DuSable Museum of African American History, Illinois Institute of Technology, Kennedy King College, Loyola University, Roosevelt University, Northwestern University, University of Illinois Chicago, University of Chicago
The Black Metropolis Research Consortium (BMRC) is an unincorporated Chicago-based association of libraries, universities, and other archival institutions with major holdings of materials that document African American and African diasporic culture, history, and politics, with a specific focus on materials relating to Chicago. The University of Chicago serves as Host Institution of the BMRC.
The BMRC is dedicated to making broadly accessible its members' holdings of materials that document African American and African diasporic culture, history, and politics, with a specific focus on materials relating to Chicago.

Filed under: Organizations

---

---

Boston Streets:  Mapping Directory Data

Tufts University
Boston Streets:  Mapping Directory Data contextualizes the people, places and events that have shaped the city from the years before the American Civil War through 20th-century urban renewal.  

Filed under: Links

---

Bureau of Justice Statistics

U.S. Department of Justice
The Bureau of Justice Statistics provides national data on such justice-related issues as crimes, victims, and corrections.

Filed under: Data

---

---

Census UK

Economic and Social Data Service
UK Census data.

Filed under: Data

---

Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture

University of Chicago
Interdisciplinary program dedicated to promoting engaged scholarship and debate around the topics of race and ethnicity.

Filed under: Organizations

---

Center for Urban and Community Studies

University of Toronto
The Center for Urban and Community Studies (CUCS), established in 1964, promotes and disseminates multidisciplinary research and policy analysis on urban issues.

The Centre's activities contribute to scholarship on questions relating to the social, economic and physical well-being of people who live and work in urban areas large and small, in Canada and around the world.

Filed under: Organizations

---

---

Chicago Longitudinal Study 1986-1989

Arthur Reynolds, University of Minnesota
Invesitgates the educational development of a same-age cohort of 1,539 low-income, minority children who grew up in high-poverty neighborhoods in central-city Chicago and attended governmental kindergarten programs in the Chicago Public Schools in 1985-1986. Children were at risk of poor outcomes because they face social-environmental disadvantages including negihborhood poverty, family low-income status, and other economic and educational hardships. 

Filed under: Data

---

Chicago Policy Review

University of Chicago
Since 1996 the Chicago Policy Review (CPR) has published top scholarship in the field of public policy analysis. Initially a forum for renowned scholars and policy experts such as Nobel Laureate James Heckman, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator John McCain, the journal has primarily published the work of students and alumni of the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago since 2006.

The Chicago Policy Review (ISSN: 1093-8990) is edited and published annually by the students of the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies. By establishing linkages between theory and practice, the Review aims to promote thought provoking, insightful, and relevant public policy decision-making.

Filed under: Journals

---

---

Consolidated Planning/ Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy (CHAS) Data

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) periodically receives "custom tabulations" of Census data from the U.S. Census Bureau that are largely not available through standard Census products. These data, known as the"CHAS" data (Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy), demonstrate the extent of housing problems and housing needs, particularly for low income households. The CHAS data are used by local governments to plan how to spend HUD funds, and may also be used by HUD to distribute grant funds. 

Filed under: Data

---

Cyberhood

Urban Affairs Association and the Center for Urban Studies at the University at Buffalo
The Cyberhood's mission is to encourage critical thinking about the the plight of communities of color, conditions in the inner city, and the problems of low-wage white workers. The website's goal is to connect students, scholars, practitioners, and activists from across the racial and class divide in order to build meaningful relationships. The building of such connections, we believe, will strengthen the struggle to understand and transform inner cities and the metropolitan regions of which they are a part. 

Filed under: Links

---

DataPlace

DataPlace is an easy-to-use source of U.S. housing and demographic data from the census tract to the national level. The cite currently contains data from the 1990 and 2000 Censuses, as well as home mortgage, Section 8, and housing needs data. There is useful directory and users can create their own maps. Included topics are mortgage lending, income and employment, housing, health, social and demographic, education, arts, and federal expenditures.

Filed under: Data

---

Displaced New Orleans Residents Survey (DNORS)

Rand
The new Displaced New Orleans Residents Survey (DNORS) is designed to examine the current location, well-being, and plans of people who lived in the City of New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck on 29 August 2005. The DNORS study builds on an earlier pilot study, the Displaced New Orleans Residents Pilot Survey (DNORPS), which was fielded in the fall of 2006. Documents describing DNORPS are available, as well as initial publications, and data.

Filed under: Data

---

Do neighborhood conditions affect school performance?

While social scientists have always been interested in the dynamics behind the low achievement of students living in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods, in recent years researchers have been trying to establish precisely the extent to which neighborhood conditions, net of other factors, influence educational achievement.

March 01, 2012

Filed under: Issues

---

Does racial segregation hurt the poor?

In their 1993 book, American Apartheid, sociologists Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton exposed the racial segregation of American cities as a core mechanism producing inequality between African Americans and whites. Between 2000 and 2010, the segregation of black and white Americans decreased slightly. Despite this trend, almost two decades after Massey and Denton’s seminal work, American cities are far from being racially integrated.

October 01, 2011

Filed under: Issues

---

Economic and Social Data Service

The Economic and Social Data Service is a national data archiving and dissemination service in the UK which came into operation in January 2003. The service is a jointly-funded initiative sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).

The ESDS is a distributed service, based on a collaboration between four key centres of expertise:

UK Data Archive (UKDA), University of Essex
Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) , University of Essex
Manchester Information and Associated Services (MIMAS), University of Manchester
Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research (CCSR), University of Manchester

These centres work collaboratively to provide preservation, dissemination, user support and training for an extensive range of key economic and social data, both quantitative and qualitative, spanning many disciplines and themes. The ESDS provides an integrated service offering enhanced support for the secondary use of data across the research, learning and teaching communities.

Filed under: Data

---

Food Environment Atlas

Economic Research Service, US Department of Agriculture
The Atlas assembles statistics on three broad categories of food environment factors:

Food Choices—Indicators of the community's access to and acquisition of healthy, affordable food, such as: access and proximity to a grocery store; number of foodstores and restaurants; expenditures on fast foods; food and nutrition assistance program participation; quantities of foods eaten; food prices; food taxes; and availability of local foods

Health and Well-Being—Indicators of the community’s success in maintaining healthy diets, such as: food insecurity; diabetes and obesity rates; and physical activity levels

Community Characteristics—Indicators of community characteristics that might influence the food environment, such as: demographic composition; income and poverty; population loss; metro-nonmetro status; natural amenities; and recreation and fitness centers

The Atlas currently includes 168 indicators of the food environment. The year and geographic level of the indicators vary to better accommodate data from a variety of sources. Some data are from the last Census of Population in 2000 while others are as recent as 2009. Some are at the county level while others are at the State or regional level. The most recent county-level data are used whenever possible.

Filed under: Links

---

How has climate change affected cities?

The first snow fell early this autumn in the northeastern United States. Yet the somewhat premature winter weather may be deceiving. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, human behavior has contributed to global climate change, and we are likely to face steadily rising temperatures in the future. These record-high temperatures are significantly affecting the health of at-risk populations such as the elderly.

January 01, 2012

Filed under: Issues

---

HUD State of the Cities Data Systems

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
The HUD State of the Cities Data Systems (SOCDS) provide data on metropolitan areas, central cities and suburbs: demographic and economic data from the 1970 through 2000 U.S. censuses, current employment statistics, jobs, business establishments, and average pay, crime, building permit, and urban public finance data.

Filed under: Data

---

Initiative for Regional and Community Transformation

Rutgers University
The Initiative for Regional and Community Transformation (IRCT) is a university-based effort that helps community residents and leaders in the public and private sectors frame workable policies that will bolster the political, economic, and social participation of marginalized communities within the larger metropolitan community. The IRCT's vision is inclusive. Not only does it encompass concerns for the poor, but leaders of the Initiative also believe that in order for metropolitan regions to support sustainable and livable communities, all sectors of civil society must be involved and see a shared interest.

Filed under: Organizations

---

Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program

Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy
The Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program was established in 1996 under the direction of William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor. The Program seeks to analyze the effects of increasing urban poverty and joblessness plaguing the inner cities and to ensure that scholarly research plays a critical role in the creation and implementation of national public policy concerning the poor.
Through conferences,seminars, and research activities, the Program agenda focuses on the various social forces and ecological factors that contribute to the marginalization and social isolation of urban populations.

Filed under: Links

---

Journal of Policy Analysis & Management (JPAM)

Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management (APPAM)
APPAM founded the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (JPAM) in 1981 through the merger of two other journals – Policy Analysis and Public Policy. Wiley-Blackwell (formerly John Wiley & Sons) has published JPAM since 1981. The current contract for publishing JPAM runs until the end of 2016. JPAM is published quarterly and is a peer-reviewed research journal. The creation of JPAM fulfilled one of the primary reasons for APPAM's existence: the dissemination of the highest quality, multidisciplinary research in public policy and management. As the Association's journal of record, JPAM's ultimate purpose is building a professional community of scholars and practitioners devoted to more effective policy analysis and public management.

Filed under: Journals

---

Journal of the American Planning Association

American Planning Association
Since 1935, the quarterly Journal of the American Planning Association has published research, commentaries, and book reviews useful to practicing planners, policy makers, scholars, students, and citizens of urban, suburban, and rural areas. JAPA publishes only peer-reviewed, original research and analysis. It aspires to bring insight to planning the future, to air a variety of perspectives, to publish the highest quality work, and to engage readers.

Filed under: Journals

---

Journal of Urban History

The Journal of Urban History (JUH), peer-reviewed and published bi-monthly, provides scholars and professionals with the latest research, analyses, and discussion on the history of cities and urban societies throughout the world. JUH presents original research by distinguished authors from the variety of fields concerned with urban history. Each insightful issue offers the latest scholarship on such topics as public housing, migration, urban growth, and more.

Filed under: Journals

---

Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A.FANS)

Rand
The Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A.FANS) is a longitudinal study of families in Los Angeles County, California, and of the neighborhoods in which they live. Research suggests that safe, supportive neighborhoods are important for children, teens, and adults. But what makes a neighborhood a positive place to live? L.A. FANS is addressing this questions by comparing the lives of children and adults in a broad range of neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles County. The L.A.FANS focuses on: neighborhood, family, and peer effects on children's development; effects of welfare reform at the neighborhood level; and residential mobility and neighborhood change. The first wave of the L.A.FANS was fielded between 2000 and 2001. Fieldwork for Wave 2 of L.A.FANS was conducted between 2006 and 2008. 

Filed under: Data

---

Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy

Harvard University Kennedy School of Government
The Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy is a vibrant intellectual community of faculty, master's and Ph.D. students, researchers, and administrative staff striving to improve public policy and practice in the areas of health care, human services, criminal justice, inequality, education, and labor. The work of the Center draws on the worlds of scholarship, policy, and practice to address pressing questions. Over the last twenty years, the Wiener Center has been an influential voice in domestic policy through faculty work on community policing, welfare reform, youth violence, inner city poverty, youth and the low-wage labor market, American Indian economic and social development, and medical error rates.

Filed under: Organizations

---

Metropolis

Metropolis is an international network for comparative research and public policy development on migration, diversity, and immigrant integration in cities in Canada and around the world.

The international arm of the Project involves partnerships with policy makers and researchers from over 20 countries, including the United States, most of Western Europe, Israel and Argentina and from the Asia-Pacific region.

Filed under: Organizations

---

---

---

Panel Study of Income Dynamics

University of Michigan
The Panel Study of Income Dynamics - PSID - is the longest running longitudinal household survey in the world. The study began in 1968 with a nationally representative sample of over 18,000 individuals living in 5,000 families in the United States. Information on these individuals and their descendants has been collected continuously, including data covering employment, income, wealth, expenditures, health, marriage, childbearing, child development, philanthropy, education, and numerous other topics. The PSID is directed by faculty at the University of Michigan, and the data are available on this website without cost to researchers and analysts.

The data are used by researchers, policy analysts, and teachers around the globe. Over 3,000 peer-reviewed publications have been based on the PSID. Recognizing the importance of the data, numerous countries have created their own PSID-like studies that now facilitate cross-national comparative research. The National Science Foundation recognized the PSID as one of the 60 most significant advances funded by NSF in its 60 year history.

Filed under: Data

---

Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Datasets

Pew Research Center
Variety of data sets on social & demographic trends

Filed under: Data

---

---

---

Policy Studies Journal

American Political Science Association; Policy Studies Organization
As the principal outlet for the Public Policy Section of the American Political Science Association and for the Policy Studies Organization (PSO), the Policy Studies Journal (PSJ) is the premier channel for the publication of public policy research. PSJ is best characterized as an outlet for theoretically and empirically grounded research on policy process and policy analysis. More specifically, we aim to publish articles that advance public policy theory, explicitly articulate its methods of data collection and analysis, and provide clear descriptions of how their work advances the literature.

Filed under: Journals

---

Poverty & Public Policy

Poverty & Public Policy is a new global journal that will address all the complex aspects of poverty, income distribution, and welfare programs around the world. The journal will be eclectic, publishing peer-reviewed empirical studies, peer-reviewed theoretical essays on approaches to poverty and social welfare, book reviews, and data sets from scholars and practitioners, including those in less developed nations.

Filed under: Journals

---

---

---

Racial Residential Segregation

University of Michigan
This website provides indexes of racial residential segregation for all states, for all counties, for all metropolitan areas and for all cities of 100,000 or more using information from the Census of 2000. Indexes of dissimilarity, exposure indexes, and interracial contact measures are available for five single races and for the three most frequently reported combinations of two races. Segregation measures are provided using three different levels of local area geography: census tracts, block groups, and blocks.

Filed under: Data

---

---

Research Center for Urban Cultural History

University of Massachusetts Boston
The Research Center for Urban Cultural History (RCUCH) premises its work on the multi-disciplinary study of cities as dynamic sites where cultures are generated, renegotiated and transmitted. Housed within an institution of higher learning with a commitment to an urban mission and an exceptionally diverse student body, and located in a city richly endowed with intellectual resources, the RCUCH initiates and facilitates scholarly and teaching projects that explore a wide array of possible links between studies of cities in the U.S. and throughout the world, encompassing both contemporary and historical topics. The Center's educational, scholarly, and outreach activities are directed toward achieving a flexible, comprehensive and innovative approach to urban cultural history in a global context.

The Center's principal focus is on interdisciplinary and collaborative research and teaching in urban cultural history. This field focuses on: the specificity of the urban setting and its environs; spatial definition; demographic and economic shifts; temporal change; cultural exchange and cultural transformation; and discursive and signifying networks created by the production of meaning between groups and populations.

Filed under: Organizations

---

---

Social Explorer

Social Explorer contains over 18,000 maps, hundreds of profile reports, 40 billion data elements, 335,000 variables and 220 years of data. Interactive mapping and reporting tools let you explore a vast array of demographic data quickly and easily. Available Maps and Reports Include: Census data from 1790 to 2010, American Community Survey (all), Religion data from InfoGroup 2009, Religion data from RCMS 1980 to 2000, Carbon emissions from the Vulcan Project/

Filed under: Data

---

Social Science Review

The School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago
Founded in 1927, Social Service Review is devoted to the publication of thought-provoking, original research on social welfare policy, organization, and practice. Articles in the Review analyze issues from the points of view of various disciplines, theories, and methodological traditions, view critical problems in context, and carefully consider long-range solutions.

The Review features balanced, scholarly contributions from social work and social welfare scholars, as well as from members of the various allied disciplines engaged in research on human behavior, social systems, history, public policy, and social services. The journal welcomes contributions on a wide range of topics, such as child welfare, poverty, homelessness, community intervention, race and ethnicity, clinical practice, and mental health. The Review also features discerning essays and substantive, critical book reviews.

Social Service Review is edited by Michael R. Sosin and the faculty of The School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago.

Filed under: Journals

---

Sociology Data Set Server

A collection of ICPSR sociological data.

Filed under: Data

---

---

Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality

Stanford University
The Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality has five objectives: to monitor trends in poverty and inequality, to support scientific analysis of poverty and inequality, to develop science-based policy on poverty and inequality, to disseminate data and research on poverty and inequality, and to train the next generation of scholars and policy analysts.

Filed under: Organizations

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

The Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality

The Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality (MCSUI) is the product of an interdisciplinary team of more than forty research scholars at 15 U.S. colleges and universities. Funded principally by the Russell Sage Foundation and The Ford Foundation, the MCSUI is designed to broaden the knowledge and understanding of how three sets of forces--changing labor market dynamics, racial attitudes and stereotypes, and racial residential segregation--act singly and in concert to foster contemporary urban inequality. To address issues in each of these domains, the MCSUI research team engaged in primary data collection, conducting linked household-employer surveys in four metropolitan areas: Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, and Los Angeles.

Filed under: Data

---

---

---

Urban Geography Commission

University of Lausanne
This commission is designed to encourage geographical research on urban systems and on new urban problems, and to further the exchange of findings among urban geographers from many countries.  Since cities, with their distinctive processes and problems, are major features of the modern world, it is vital to have a commission that focuses on their characteristics, problems and solutions in a comparative global context.  A key aspect of the new commission will be the encouragement of younger scholars to participate in our meetings.

Filed under: Organizations

---

Urban Planning, 1794-1918: An International Anthology of Articles, Conference Papers, and Reports

Cornell University
This site includes documents that are primary source material for the study of how urban planning developed up to the end of World War I. They include statements about techniques, principles, theories, and practice by those who helped to create a new professional specialization. This new field of city planning grew out of the land-based professions of architecture, engineering, surveying, and landscape architecture, as well as from the work of economists, social workers, lawyers, public health specialists, and municipal administrators.

Filed under: Links

---

Urban Research Plurality Map

Center for Urban Research, Graduate Center of the City University of New York
The map portrays race/ethnicity population patterns in 2000 and 2010 using color-shaded Census blocks throughout the Boston, Chicago, Huston, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco metropolitan regions.

The screen is split: the map on the left shows the block-level race/ethnicity patterns based on the 2000 Census; the map on the right shows the plurality patterns based on the 2010 Census. As you drag the slider to the left or right, you'll see how the race/ethnicity patterns changed from 2000 to 2010.

Filed under: Links

---

Urban Studies

Urban Studies is a fully peer reviewed international journal that publishes original research and review articles which deal with every kind of urban and regional problem that is susceptible to social science or other relevant analysis. These range from such problems as urban housing, employment, race, politics and crime, to problems of regional investment and transport. Although most articles published deal with problems located in the advanced industrial societies of Europe and the Americas, important articles dealing with these problems in Asia, the Third World and in Eastern Europe are also published regularly.

Filed under: Journals

---

US 2010

Brown University
As a public service, the American Communities Project makes information available on specific metropolitan areas and their respective city and suburban portions. We encourage users to interpret for themselves what is happening in their area.

This site includes data in the following topic areas: residential segregation, separate and unequal, and school segregation along with a description of each topic, and a choice of three ways to view the data. Users can compare across years, from as early as 1980 through 2010.

Filed under: Data

---

---

---

The University of Chicago Urban Network
1126 East 59th Street, Box 114 Chicago, Illinois 60637
773.702.5116 | urban@uchicago.edu
Urban Network email list | Follow us on Twitter | Like us on Facebook

© 2013 The University of Chicago