Beyond the Census: Data Needs and Urban Policy Analysis

Abstract

Over the last decade, the pressures on geographers to demonstrate the relevance of their intellectual wares have increased, as they have for most other social scientists. Although some success has been achieved, overall progress has been slow and has served to illustrate rather forcibly that the eclectic generalizations of existing theories provide a painfully inadequate basis for policy in both the public and private sectors. Reasons for this state of affairs are diverse. In part, it stems from the bias of much research which seeks to examine the nature of only those phenomena deemed the proper subject of discourse within a given discipline while controlling for the effects of other influences either by assumption or research design. In part, it reflects the fact that the search for operational strategies in dealing with issues imposes different demands on analysis than does the attempt to construct explanatory theories. By no means least important, current difficulties reflect the inappropriateness of available data for addressing many questions which appear most relevant to the public policy arena. Each of these arguments is worthy of detailed examination; in this essay, however, I will focus attention on the last observation for it is clear that the opportunities to use new types of data are rapidly expanding and the links between such data and questions of interest to social scientists should be clarified.