Launched in January 2016, Turning the Corner: Monitoring Neighborhood Change to Prevent Displacement piloted a research model in five cities to monitor neighborhood change, drive informed government action, and support displacement prevention and inclusive revitalization. The project was motivated by a desire to understand neighborhood revitalization and related displacement pressures in cities with recovering or moderately strong housing markets. Local participating sites included Buffalo, New York; Detroit, Michigan; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Phoenix, Arizona; and the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul), Minnesota. See the list below for the project’s other publications: two briefs with cross-site lessons and recommendations and a guide on data for measuring neighborhood change.

This report provides an overview of the project and then summarizes each site’s activities and insights. Local project teams selected two to four focus neighborhoods where rising housing prices were increasing the risk of displacement among longer-term residents or already were displacing residents. They used quantitative and qualitative data to examine aspects of change in these neighborhoods; explore types of displacement, such as residential, cultural, and commercial; and consider practical applications of research to urgent program and policy questions.

The Turning the Corner project was guided by the Urban Institute’s National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP) and the Federal Reserve-Philanthropy Initiative, a collaboration between the Restoring Prosperity in Older Industrial Cities Working Group of the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities and several Federal Reserve district banks.  For more information, visit NNIP’s Turning the Corner project website.

Other project publications

• Turning the Corner: Lessons from Five Cities on Displacement Risk in Changing Neighborhoods. A brief providing lessons about displacement risk in recovering or moderately strong housing markets and recommendations for governments and the civic sector to ensure revitalization benefits longer-term residents.
• Turning the Corner: Implications of Neighborhood Revitalization for Public Safety, Small Businesses, and Capital Investments. A brief discussing three topics related to equitable development that emerged across the five sites.
• Guide to Measuring Neighborhood Change to Understand and Prevent Displacement. A guide on data sources and methods for monitoring neighborhood change, drawn from the experiences of the Turning the Corner local research and from NNIP.

Thumbnail Image Courtesy of Data Driven Detroit