Kansas City

The Center for Economic Information (CEI) was established in 1994 as a research unit in the Department of Economics of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Its stated mission at that time was to use advancing information technology in support of both academic research and economic decision-makers in the public, private, and non-profit sectors. Our initial commission was as a core unit of the Missouri State Census Data Center (MSCDC), funded by the State of Missouri in collaboration with the State Data Center Program of the Census Bureau. For a short, anecdotal version of CEI's origins, read A Brief History of CEI, as recounted by Dr. Eugene Wagner.

In 1997, UMKC was awarded a HUD COPC (Community Outreach Partnership Center) Grant, which included a role for CEI in neighborhood asset-mapping. This evolved into a pilot project for what eventually was to become the 2000 Neighborhood Housing Conditions Survey (NHCS), a fifteen-point property conditions evaluation which was applied to 85,000 parcels, constituting 100% of residential property and vacant lots in 120 urban neighborhoods of KCMo. Around this time, the survey was also commissioned for the urban core areas of Kansas City, Kansas, and Independence and Sugar Creek in Missouri. While it has not yet been fully replicated in KCMo, the survey continues to be applied under annual contracts with the city in selected neighborhoods, for support of strategic planning and program evaluation.

Internet publication of the parcel-level 2000 NHCS data (as a first-generation IMS prototype) provided the foundation for CityScope, which has evolved into CEI's public access neighborhood indicators data platform. Other data currently available includes tract, block group, and block level data from the 1990 and 2000 Decennial Census, monthly reported crime statistics from KCMo and KCKs Police Departments at block and neighborhood summary levels, and annual residential lending data collected in compliance with the Community Reinvestment and Home Mortgage Disclosure Acts (CRA and HMDA). The site currently records over 2000 registered users, and is scheduled for a major content and functionality upgrade in Summer 2010, including indicators derived from an extensive inventory of municipal administrative data.

In 2005, CEI began to pursue more direct engagement with urban neighborhoods. This engagement eventually led, in 2008, to formalization of a policy that had always been implicit in our operations philosophy: the Neighborhood Development Services Program (NDSP). Financed through leverage of ongoing grant and contract revenues, and drawing on the resources of our established indicator data program, the NDSP represents CEI's formal commitment to provide data-driven strategic planning support services to Kansas City urban neighborhoods, on demand and pro bono, to the limits of our capacity. Further leverage of staff capacity has been achieved through training and supervision of graduate and undergraduate student assistants in response to NDSP requests.

In Spring 2009, our commitment to working with urban neighborhoods led to a contract with the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC), funded through the City of KCMo, to provide data collection, analysis, and program evaluation services for the Green Impact Zone of Missouri (GIZMO), a project initiated by the office of 5th Missouri District Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, to concentrate ARRA stimulus funding in an urban community with demonstrable impact. One of the contract deliverables for this project, the Green Impact Zone Data and Map Server (http://kc-csrv-ceiweb.kc.umkc.edu/greenimpactzone), represents a prototype installation of the scheduled CityScope upgrade.

The Community-Wide Information Network (CWIN) originated in 1997, when the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC), Kansas City's Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), convened representatives from regional organizations whose missions included or entailed collection of significant socio-economic and other data resources. Its goal was to create a collaborative, shared regional data resource, a "clearinghouse of neighborhood information". CEI was a member of this original group. Over time, active CWIN organizational membership would wax and wane (sustained, however, by continuous engagement of a relatively small core group), meetings would fluctuate between monthly and bi-monthly frequency, and the group’s orientation toward achievement of the ultimate goal would oscillate between more desultory organizational information-sharing at monthly meetings and active pursuit of a concrete organizational structure and functional regional data system. During this same period of time, CEI continued development of its own neighborhood indicator data program, and the CityScope web site.

In 2008, David Park, Acting Director of the KCMo Department of Neighborhood and Community Services, invited representatives of community organizations and agencies to a meeting whose purpose was to promote the idea of Kansas City’s participation in the NNIP. Representatives of both CEI and MARC attended this meeting, and suggested that an NNIP application could best be pursued through the CWIN organizational framework. Subsequent CWIN meetings led to the conclusion that this should take the form of an immediate application by CEI for NNIP partnership status, with formalization of the CWIN collaborative in support of that application and with its formal commitment to support of a long-range regional KC indicator program congruent with NNIP partner requirements and expectations. This suggestion was adopted; a formal MOU was drafted and signed by a number of organizations, and was included with CEI's NNIP application. In addition to CEI and MARC, the organizations committing to the formal CWIN MOU include:

1. The City of Kansas City, Missouri
2. The Kansas City Public Library
3. The Mid-America Assistance Coalition (MAAC)
4. United Community Services of Johnson County
5. The Local Investment Commission (LINC)
6. The Downtown Council of KCMo

These organizations include almost all of the sustained core membership in CWIN over the course of its 12 year history. Formal organizational membership and associated regional data resources are expected to grow significantly over time.