Why Should We Map Neighborhood Conditions?
An extensive body of research has established that neighborhood conditions and proximity to opportunities such as high performing education or sustainable employment have a critical impact on quality of life and self advancement. The central premise of opportunity mapping is that residents of a metropolitan area are situated within an interconnected web of opportunities that shape their quality of life. Opportunity mapping provides an analytical framework to measure opportunity comprehensively in metropolitan regions and determine who has access to opportunity rich areas. Opportunity mapping also provides a framework to assess what factors are limiting opportunity in a community and can assist in identifying what measures are needed to remedy these impediments to opportunity.
Understanding "Neighborhood Effect": Nearly fifty years of research literature has established the importance of neighborhoods or "place" on people. The Kirwan Institute continually tracks this research and keeps an updated annotated bibliography of relevant research literature. Follow this link to access the annotated bibliography. For more information about our on-going research on neighborhood effect please contact Christy Rogers.
