In many communities, elected officials often neglect to involve residents in strategic planning processes until the end, which does not allow for meaningful community input. Failing to include resident perspectives can also perpetuate systems and policies that reinforce racial and economic inequities. Boone County, Missouri, however, is disrupting this cycle by prioritizing community engagement from the start.

Their approach? A data walk.

What is a data walk?

A data walk uses data sharing as the foundation for local community collaboration. Residents and stakeholders essentially “travel” through a presentation of posters with data tables, charts, and infographics about their community while reacting to and discussing what they see. These open conversations about the data empower residents to explore current conditions in their community and identify gaps in services and programs that could be strengthened to better serve community members.

Boone County, a member of the Urban Institute’s Upward Mobility county cohort, recently hosted a data walk to garner excitement and community interest in the cocreation of their Mobility Action Plan. The event not only helped the county select priorities for its plan but also provided space for residents with lived experience to give feedback and ensure that priorities are aligned with and serve their needs. At the close of the data walk, some residents chose to continue to work on the Mobility Action Plan by joining committees that will develop solutions related to each selected priority.

Below, we provide an overview of the steps Boone County took to host its data walk, which other communities could adapt for their own local contexts.

Boone County’s data walk process

1. Supplement the mobility metrics with additional local data and create posters. Boone County invited county and community organizations to supplement the data Urban provided through our Upward Mobility Cohort. The county then created posters that displayed Urban’s data alongside local data to show where disparities lie in the community. They separated the data into categories based upon the three drivers of upward mobility identified by Urban: strong and healthy families, supportive communities, and opportunities to earn and learn.
2. Invite residents, county officials, and community leaders to attend the data walk. To disrupt top-down policymaking and priority setting, Boone County invited a diverse set of community organizations and residents to participate in the data walk to ensure a variety of perspectives would be heard.
3. Participants travel through the data gallery. Participants paired up to review posters and shared their reactions with one another in real time. Pairs then traveled around the room visiting each data poster and reacted to the data presented.
4. Break out into three groups. Participants joined one of the three groups determined by the mobility drivers: strong and healthy families, supportive communities, or opportunities to earn and learn.
5. Facilitate discussions about the data. Participants in each mobility driver group discussed their reactions to the posters in their category. They were asked to reach a consensus on which three issues Boone County should prioritize during mobility action planning.
6. Share the priorities with the rest of the room. The mobility driver group discussions then expanded to the whole room, with participants sharing their group’s initial priorities. They then collectively identified the frequency of and patterns in priorities. From there, they determined which priority areas community planning teams would focus on.
7. Initial planning. Once the initial priority areas were defined, participants were asked if they would continue working in their selected groups during the community’s mobility action planning process. They then formed three teams and discussed next steps for continuing the action planning process.

A central component to boosting upward mobility is how much power and autonomy people have over their own lives and the collective capacity to influence larger community policies. Data walks and other community engagement methods are crucial approaches to supporting that element of mobility because of their ability to include residents throughout the policymaking process, rather than obtaining their feedback after key decisions have already been made. This real-time input is essential to creating more inclusive and equitable policies and ensuring residents have power and autonomy within their community.