Top Hat Café Opens on Old Walnut Street: What is Lost, Can be Restored
It’s quiet inside Old Walnut Plaza. Besides the scattered conversations of Chrome Camp students filling out of the building at the end of their NTI classes, the building is quiet. The pandemic has forced the small businesses within the building to re-strategize and brace themselves for an unprecedented future that Louisville, and the rest of the […] Read More »
Universal Basic Income Could Help Solve Louisville Housing Crisis
As a supplement to our report on Housing Justice, the GLP has invited experts working with housing in Louisville to share their thoughts. This is one of those posts. The economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is “K-shaped,” benefiting the rich while plunging low- and middle-income residents further into debt. Even before the pandemic, families struggled […] Read More »
The Time is Now: Stopping Evictions During the Pandemic and Beyond
As a supplement to our report on Housing Justice, the GLP has invited experts working with housing in Louisville to share their thoughts. This is one of those posts. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic began, thousands of individuals and families were being evicted from their homes in Louisville each year. According to the Metropolitan Housing […] Read More »
Healthy at Home (If You’re Lucky)
As a supplement to our report on Housing Justice, the GLP has invited experts working with housing in Louisville to share their thoughts. This is one of those posts. Last week, South Louisville Community Ministries received a call from a family that literally lost everything. Not from a fire, but from an eviction. The sheriff was […] Read More »
100 Community Partners Unite to get Louisville Children Ready for Kindergarten
By Ashley Brandt | Senior Manager, Early Care and Education | Metro United Way Nearly 50% of children in Jefferson County enter kindergarten unprepared to learn. Why does this matter? Isn’t kindergarten only the beginning of a child’s academic career? Don’t kindergarteners have plenty of time to learn and catch up with their peers? Unfortunately, they […] Read More »
Greater Louisville Project Releases 2019 Competitive City Report: The Flow of Community Investment
On July 7 at 11 a.m. the Greater Louisville Project (GLP) held an online community conversation about its 2019 Competitive City Update: The Flow of Community Investment. The report takes a comprehensive look at how the public, private and government sectors invest in our community. Recordings of the event are available on the Greater Louisville […] Read More »
See what Kentucky Youth Advocates Research Director, Amy Swann has to say about the 2020 Census
Kentucky Youth Advocates Research Director, Amy Swann on how the Census impacts our kids at school, how the Census can impact kids’ health, how you can be sure you’re speaking to a legitimate Census Bureau employee, and more. For more information on 2020 Census jobs, click here. Learn how you can spread the word here. […] Read More »
See what Metro United Way Director of Engagement, Mandy Simpson has to say about the 2020 Census
Metro United Way Director of Engagement Mandy Simpson discusses groups that are typically undercounted in the Census, how the Census impacts international communities, why it’s easier than ever to complete the Census, and more. For more information on 2020 Census jobs, click here. Learn how you can spread the word here. To view important dates […] Read More »
See what Kentucky State Representative, Attica Scott has to say about the 2020 Census
State Representative of Kentucky House District 41, Rep. Attica Scott discusses the importance of the 2020 Census, how it determines redistricting and representation, why you shouldn’t be concerned with completing the survey, and more. For more information on 2020 Census jobs, click here. Learn how you can spread the word here. To view important dates […] Read More »
Celebrate Juneteenth, Support Louisville’s Positive Social Associations
In 2005, Kentucky officially became one of the now 47 states to recognize Juneteenth as an American holiday. Celebrated annually on June 19, Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger read federal orders in Galveston, Texas that all previously enslaved people in Texas were free. Two and a half years after the […] Read More »
Natural Breaks Algorithm
For each indicator, Greater Louisville Project assigns cities into one of three groups (high-performing, middle-of-the-pack, and low-performing) based on how they compare to other cities. The assignment is based on how cities naturally cluster on that indicator. Sometimes, the differences between cities are very small, and the difference between a city ranked 5th and 6th could simply be a matter of the sampling error that arises from using survey data. Thus, rather than always make a division that declares the top 5 to be the top tier, we use a natural breaks algorithm to look for a cluster of cities that is outperforming the rest, a cluster that is about average, and a cluster that is lagging. This clustering gives us a better indication of where Louisville is thriving and where Louisville has room to learn from cities that are doing better.
Z-Scores
Z-scores (or standardization) is a way to combine data with different units of measurement into a single index. The z-score is a measure of how far away a city (or census tract, etc.) is from the average city. In order to be comparable across different units of measurement, the z-score is the distance from the mean measured in standard deviations (e.g. if Louisville has a z-score of 1 it means Louisville is 1 standard deviation above the mean of its peer cities).
Data from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's County Health Rankings use z-scores and all z-scores are relative to the mean of Louisville's peer cities. (On the County Health Rankings site z-scores are relative to all the counties in each state - thus z-scores reported by GLP will be different, because we are using a different reference group). The Greater Louisville Project also uses z-scores in our multidimensional poverty index, which compares each census tract to the mean of all census tracts in Louisville.