Related Organizations

We have found that there is a vast wealth of information that is within the reach of people and organizations with access to the internet. In the process of developing MPIP, we found that these were often difficult to find. The links below provide a “short cut” to some of the more important places on the web to obtain a variety of information that might be useful for the development of more specialized information about communities. Please enjoy your surfing, and be sure to alert us if any of the links are either broken or have particularly slow loading times. 

Community Indicators—Basic information about other efforts to develop community indicators

National Neighborhood Indicator Partnership (NNIP):http://www.urban.org/nnip

Community Indicators Consortium: Members include International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS) [http://marketing.cob.vt.edu/isqols]

International Sustainability Indicators Network (ISIN) [http://www.sustainabilityindicators.org]

National Association of Planning Councils (NAPC) [http://www.communityplanning.org]

Association for Community Health Improvement (ACHI) [http://www.communityhlth.org]

United Way America (UWA) [http://national.unitedway.org]

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) [http://www.cdc.gov]

National Civic League (NCL) [http://www.ncl.org]


Regional Information Sources—Good sources of a wide variety of community relevant data and information

The Reinvestment Fund (TRF) is a good source of information about reinvesting for community revitalization and development, and on efforts to diminish poverty in the region, at http://www.trfund.com

Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) provides a wide variety of planning and related community, transportation and environmental data sets at http://www.dvrpc.org

Philadelphia Health Management Corporation (PHMC) provides a wide variety of health related data at http://www.phmc.org/chdb/

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia provides a series of regular reports on the economic health of the region and the nation, as well as a series of links to other resources, at http://www.phil.frb.org/econ/br/

The Pennsylvania Economy League (PEL) is a major source of information and survey data addressing public issues in the Philadelphia region, and can be accessed at http://www.peleast.org/


Within Philadelphia, a great amount of information can be obtained from:

For parcel based and neighborhood information, the University of Pennsylvania’s Cartographic Modeling Laboratory, http://cml.upenn.edu 

For community development plans and data, see the Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporations (PACDC) website, at http://www.pacdc.org

For city investments in neighborhoods, Philadelphia City Planning Commission (PCPC) http://www.philaplanning.org#


Geographic Context—Sites that are important for developing consistent digital definitions of communities and their boundaries, across a wide variety of data sets

For basic data on community boundaries and related questions, the U.S. Census, at http://factfinder.census.gov/jsp/saff/SAFFInfo.jsp?_pageId=gn7_maps

For related mapping sources, visit ESRI at http://www.esri.com or http://www.geographynetwork.com/

For a wide variety of information needed for mapping, visit:
Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access site (PASDA) at http://www.pasda.psu.edu/,

DVRPC at http://www.dvrpc.org/data.htm, or

New Jersey Geographic Information Network (NJGIN) at https://njgin.state.nj.us/NJ_NJGINExplorer/index.jsp



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