This is the final assignment for Community Portraits (CORCOM225). It involves obtaining and summarizing information about one aspect of your community. You have great deal of choice about the topic you wish to look at. It is a short assignment, involving much less work than the community history and census assignments. Do not make it into a major research project.

Be sure to write down the sources and locations of your information. If some of your information is from interviews, note the name of the person, title, if any, and date interviewed.

Select ONE of the following topics, or, propose a different topic for the instructor's approval:

• apartment rent survey

• health data summary

• social service profile

• school inventory and enrollment summary

• transportation profile

• land use map

• environmental profile

• industry and employment profile

• real estate title searches

• municipal budget summary

• crime summary

• voter registration and election statistics summary

• the major elected and appointed positions and boards, and the individuals who occupy them
  

Apartment Rent Survey
This assignment should only be done if your community contains a substantial number of apartments. It consists of an analysis of apartment ads in the Boston Sunday Globe (or an acceptable alternative) for five Sundays (or another day if you use a local paper when it has the most apartment ads).  You may use fewer than five sundays if you obtain 60 apartment rental advertisements with fewer dates.

Go through the Globe ads and tally apartment rents for each week on a form provided by the instructor that is by rent levels and number of bedrooms. Use slash marks in groups of five. Keep the marks small and close together or you may run out of room. Put a check mark by each ad as it is read off.

When you have completed the five forms, prepare a sixth form on which you have added the five weekly figures for each rent and bedroom size. Compute the row totals and column totals for this form.

Then prepare a final form calculating the column percents using your calculator. After you have completed Studios, do 1BR, then 2BR, then 3+BR, then the Total column. Look over the percents you have calculated to make sure that they make sense.
 

Health Data Analysis
Obtain data on the following aspects of health for the past 10 years for your community and for the entire Community Health Network Area in which your community is located:
live births, immature births, infant mortality, leading causes of death (since Boston neighborhood data are not available on this, use the entire city)

Prepare tables and/or graphs and a written summary, comparing the trends for the community with the trends for the entire CHNA. Indicate health resources for the community by identifying the acute care hospitals serving the community and whether the community is a Medically Underserved Area.

For cities and towns, you can obtain the information from the Mass. Dept. of Public Health (Health Statistics Office), 727-3282. For Boston neighborhoods, you can obtain the information from the Boston Public Health Commission, 534-5395; website: www.tiac.net/users/bdph/orhads/hob.htm. You can also obtain the information on-line from the Mass. Dept. of Public Health's "Massachusetts Community Health Information Profile (CHIP)" website: http://www.state.ma.us/dph/ose/mchphonme.htm. Note, though, that when you go to the website, you will find that you have to indicate that you are affiliated with a "Massachusetts State College or University" before you can get data.
 

Social Services Profile
Compile an inventory of the providers of social services to the community, including such areas as child care, youth, elderly services, alcohol and drug abuse, mental health, homelessness. Include at least 15 providers. For each provider, indicate location, type of services, type of client population served and approximate "volume" of service in recent years.

You should obtain this information from a local human services collaborative, a local multi-service agency, or the Human Services Yellow Pages.  

School Inventory and Enrollment Analysis
Prepare an inventory of primary and secondary schools serving the community.

Compile a table or graphs showing trends in total enrollments and trends in the racial composition of the student population over the past 10 years. Write a brief summary of the major trends and their implications.

You may obtain the information from your local school department or from the Massachusetts Dept. of Education (Planning, Research & Evaluation Office), 388-3300, x524. All of the information is also available on-line at the Mass. DOE website: www.doe.mass.edu/pic.www/pic.html.  

Transportation Profile
Prepare a profile of transportation services and issues in the community, including:
a. a map showing public transportation routes
b. a discussion of transportation issues, including problems with public transit frequency and routes, traffic problems, road conditions, parking.

You may obtain this information from the local transportation department, and info on public transit from the MBTA, 722-3200, or from the MBTA website .

Land Use Map
Obtain a map which includes the community and draw on it the boundaries. Indicate on the map, through various colors or patterns, the land uses of the various areas of the community. Typical land use categories are
a. Residential
1. single-family
2. 2-4 unit house
3. 5 and over unit buildings
b. Commercial (stores, offices, hotels)
c. Industrial (factories, warehouses, railroad yards, etc.)
d. Institutional (schools, hospitals, churches, government buildings, cemeteries, etc.)
e. Recreational (parks, beaches, etc.)
f. Vacant
A map of a large enough scale to have buildings marked on it is needed for this exercise. A good scale is 1" = 200'; these are available for purchase at the Boston Redevelopment Authority for Boston neighborhoods, or at the Planning or Community Development Department in other cities and towns.

If you wish to use categories other than those listed above, you may if they make better sense in describing your neighborhood. Also, don't be afraid to write notes on your map as well. If there is a mixed-use (commercial on the first floor, housing above, etc.), you can draw a diagonal through the lot and color each half differently. Usually in coloring a map according to uses, you include the whole lot, not just the building. You may need to compile this information by walking or driving around the community. NOTE: Land use is not necessarily the same as zoning. Zoning establishes the currently permitted use, which may not be the same as the actual land use.

Environmental Profile
Prepare an environmental profile including:
a. a map and inventory of environmental amenities, such as parks, recreation areas, and other open spaces and historical areas or landmarks, identifying the location and facilities of each;
b. a discussion of environmental issues affecting the community, including noise, air or water pollution, toxic wastes, erosion, etc., and plans or actions underway or contemplated for dealing with these issues.

You will be able to obtain this information from your local parks department, conservation commission, and public works department, and possibly from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), 60 Temple Place, Boston, 451-2770. You can also obtain information about local toxic chemical sources for most zip codes from the Environmental Defense Fund's Internet "Scorecard" website at: http://www.scorecard.org/; or from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development map website: http://www.hud.gov/emaps.  

Industry and Employment Profile
For your city or town and one comparison city or town, obtain information on

a. average annual wages paid by employers
b. total number of establishments
c. total average annual employment
d. average annual employment in each of the 9 major industry categories:
government
agriculture, forestry and fisheries
mining
contract construction
manufacturing
transportation, communication, public utilities
wholesale and retail trade
finance, insurance and real estate
services

Prepare tables and/or graphs showing the information. Write a brief summary of the patterns and trends for the community and how your community differs from the comparison community. Note: This exercise is obviously not appropriate for communities that have few places of employment! Also, this information is not available for Boston neighborhoods.
  This information is available from the Massachusetts Dept. of Employment and Training (Research Dept.), Hurley Building, 19 Staniford St., Boston, 626-6464. It is also available from DET on the web at www.detma.org/local/local.htm.
 

Title Searches
Select two pieces of property for which you do not yet know the name of the owner. For each piece of property, find out:
 a. the owner as of the present date;
b. when purchased, from whom, purchase price, mortgage holders and amounts;
c. chain of former owners and mortgages back to 1950.

You may receive help for this in the book People Before Property (entire book is in the UMass Healey library), which has advice on to how to carry out a title search.
 

Municipal Budget Analysis
Obtain revenue and expenditure data for the city or town in which your community of study is located for three fiscal years (e.g., 1995, 1990, and 1985).

You can obtain the information on local revenues and expenditures from the office of the city or town clerk at city hall/town hall. It is also available on-line from the Mass. Dept. of Revenue, Division of Local Services website: http://www.magnet.state.ma.us/dls/allfiles.htm.
 

Crime Summary
Obtain crime statistics for the past 10 years, for your community and two comparison communities (one that you think is similar to your community and the other that you think is quite different) for the following categories:

Prepare tables and/or graphs of the information. Write a brief summary of the crime patterns and trends for your community and how they compare with the two comparison communities. The information is available in the FBI report, Crime in the U.S., which is at the U Mass Healey Library Reference Room, 4th floor. You may also obtain data for individual cities and towns from the local police departments.
 

Voter Registration and Election Statistics Summary
Obtain information about total voter registration and party affiliation for your community for the past 10 years. Obtain information about voter turnout for each local, state and national election for the past 10 years. For each of the state and national elections of the past 10 years, obtain tallies of votes for each of the major candidates for each major office.

Prepare local government organization chart or charts, showing the major elected positions and appointed boards and commissions.