Like a growing number of organizations, the Urban Institute maintains a style guide for data graphics. This guide specifies almost a dozen elements that should appear on charts, like axis labels and source lines. After recent discussions about a check list to help the blog team review charts and get…
At the Urban Institute, we’ve been working for more than 50 years to produce evidence-based economic and social policy research. A good portion of that research is available on our main website, urban.org, which launched in October 1996, but a significant portion pre-dates the website. Up to now, older research…
Lessons Learned from Exploring the Landscape of Landlords in the Twin Cities
In North Minneapolis, renters living in single-family homes owned by real estate investment trusts and private equity firms reported poor housing conditions, unexpected fees, and unresponsive management staff. Many of the tenants are also preparing to fight eviction filings from these owners that they worry will follow the end of…
The challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic have shifted how the Urban Institute engages stakeholders, policymakers, and the public in our events. More than a year ago, Urban’s events team quickly pivoted and restructured in response to work-from-home mandates. …
Over the past year, journalists and researchers have found creative ways to analyze and visualize COVID-19 data, including trends on infections, deaths, and vaccinations around the world. But getting, cleaning, contextualizing, and visualizing COVID-19 data can be challenging because it’s hard to know where to start.
Data management and quality assurance is key to delivering rigorous and reliable policy analysis. The Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center uses multiple property records data sources, including Agency Mortgage-Backed Security data and Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, to study structural barriers homeowners of color face. …
The State and Local Finance Initiative (SLFI) at the Urban Institute works with state policymakers across the country on tax and budget issues. However, understanding how a state brings in revenue and funds expenditures is impossible without considering a state’s demographics, its economy, and its leaders’ priorities. …
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented extreme challenges to families and children facing elevated levels of food insecurity. Understanding nutritional need levels is important for local and federal policymakers to determine where, when, and how to provide support to families. But getting a handle on these needs has been made difficult…
Last year I, along with a few colleagues from the Urban Institute’s Technology and Data Science team, participated in a Data@Urban digital discussion about women in tech. Though the topic was obviously broad, we felt that our perspective — as women working in technology at a nonprofit institution — was…
Last year, we announced our collaboration with the Cloudera Foundation to accelerate our progress toward a vision of providing free and open access to high-quality education data for a diverse set of stakeholders pushing for change. …
