Overview
The Applied Population Laboratory has long provided data, analysis tools, consultation, and studies oriented towards community development, planning, and decision making in Wisconsin communities. This role was amplified when, in the fall of 1999, the Comprehensive Planning Law was passed as part of the State’s biennial budget bill. Many Wisconsin communities have been developing comprehensive plans since that time and the APL has responded to the need for resources to assist local governments in preparing a comprehensive plan. The APL has done extensive work in providing interactive, easy to use tools for accessing and analyzing community-level information on population, housing, social characteristics, economic characteristics, and physical and environmental features that are often incorporated into planning processes. In addition, we work with non-profit groups and agencies to analyze various aspects of community health and well-being.
Our Approach
The APL’s goal is to provide access to easily understandable, place-based data that can be used by communities and local governments for evaluation, assessment, and decision making. We are guided by “empowerment” models of community development and planning. In other words, we strive to facilitate access to community information and encourage community involvement in using and analyzing that information with the understanding that this kind of an interactive process helps build capacity in community organizations and local governments. Community information should be accessible and usable by all who need it (regardless of experience level or expertise) and our work should “democratize” data. We believe that community organizations and local governments know more about their communities than anyone and that combining local knowledge with informational resources about the demographic, social, and economic changes taking place around them is vital for better understanding populations in places.
One way in which we have forwarded this goal is by building community websites that provide easy access to demographic data for small area geographies. This allows users to make maps, tables, and charts, and to generate community indicators or profiles. Working with community or local clients, we strive to provide informational resources that are tailored to address likely data users and important community or local issues.
Services
For communities engaged in comprehensive planning, the Applied Population Laboratory (APL) provides U.S. Census data useful for several required elements (including the Issues and Opportunities element) through a web application called GetFacts. GetFacts is an interactive mapping site with data downloading capabilities. The site allows you to download data as a Microsoft Excel document or as a shapefile (GIS file) along with Census variables that can be used to develop the planning elements. The site also provides links to counties and municipalities who have adopted comprehensive plans.
The APL works with individual counties, communities, or organizations to summarize data that might be useful for community development projects, generate indicators of community health and well-being, clarify community assets, and/or demonstrate community needs. Along these lines, we build community information systems containing data from the Census, state agencies and local sources, locally produced information from surveys and assets inventories, qualitative data generated by community or neighborhood residents, and physical/environmental data. Often the community information systems we build are served through an interactive website that can display and download data in tables, maps, charts/graphs and profiles. While the process for building community information systems generally involves some labor and effort from community collaborators and partners, we charge project fees (on a cost recovery basis) for the development and maintenance of the systems.
Similar to websites, the APL produces traditional demographic products such as maps, tables, charts, reports, and/or presentations that communicate information about community development, neighborhood health, local assets, and/or needs. We work with communities to best provide the types of information and the types of products that will be most useful for them.
Please contact James Beaudoin, Sarah Kemp, Dave Long, or Dan Veroff with questions or for more information.
Expertise
Several APL core staff have specific content area expertise and interdisciplinary perspectives on community development and planning from the fields of urban and regional planning, geography, and community sociology. In addition, several of us have “frontline” experience working in community settings on community development and planning projects. The following members of the APL are actively involved in building community information systems and/or community development and planning activities: James Beaudoin, Sarah Kemp, Dave Long, Dan Veroff and Richelle Winkler.
