A New Approach: To an Urban Information Process

This paper outlines a proposed method for gaining continuous information about the activities, attitudes, and concerns of citizens within an urban community. The method provides quick feedback on actions and changes made within the community. It monitors longitudinally, the effects of actions and changes on the population.

The approach is derived from marketing panel surveys. It utilizes neighborhood personnel. The organizational aspects of such an enterprise are emphasized, a basic objective being to guarantee the availability of better information to citizen groups as well as public officials. Possible uses of the data collected from such a reporting system are outlined, along with possible modeling efforts and methods of community distribution and utilization. The ultimate goal is the wielding of an effective interface between competing decision-making centers as these wrestle with the major problem of confronting the urban community—uncertainty.