ASHER JOSEPH PHOTOS
Sandra Redjali, Kristin Barendregt-Ludwig, and Amanda Glatter celebrate the "fruits of [their] labor."
A New Haven age snapshot, thanks to the CT Town Data Viewer.
Want to know what percentage of New Haven households are owner-occupied?
Or how much of the city’s population is foreign-born?
Or how New Haven’s mid-century Urban Renewal changes were rooted in a long history of city planning ideas from Europe, and weren’t just a response to post-war blight?
Well then you’re in luck, thanks to the launch of two new research resources focused on Elm City data and the interaction of New Haveners and the built and natural environment.
More than 50 people ate Ashley’s ice cream, talked demographic numbers, and announced those two new projects — including a research library — at a Monday evening social hosted by DataHaven and the Yale Center for Environmental Justice (YCEJ).
Those ice cream enjoyers gathered at the Yale School of the Environment for DataHaven’s third annual Data & Ice Cream Social, hosted for the first time in conjunction with the YCEJ to debut two new resources for researchers and Connecticut residents alike.
The first of those two new resources is the Connecticut Town Data Viewer. The viewer compiles data about demographics across the state and aims to “make data more accessible and easier to identify trends,” according to Camille Seaberry, a senior research associate at DataHaven.
Those demographics span identity, housing, income, health, and more using downloadable data from national and local sources, including DataHaven’s Community Wellbeing Survey.
To answer the first two questions posed at the top of this story: 29 percent of New Haven households are owner-occupied, compared to 66 percent statewide; and 18 percent of city residents are foreign-born, compared to 15 percent statewide.
The second resource was unveiled on Monday by YCEJ Program Manager Kristin Barendregt-Ludwig: the New Haven People and the Environment Research Library (PERL).
The PERL has been in development since 2022 and is a digital library intended to document the interactions between New Haveners and their environment.
“We came up with New Haven PERL because we noticed that there was a lot of interest in doing research on the environment in New Haven, especially in environmental justice and that intersection,” said Barendregt-Ludwig. “We also wanted to make sure researchers could build on existing sources, so they weren’t duplicating efforts and could connect with existing partnerships.”
To answer the third question posed above, about European roots of Urban Renewal, check out this PERL-available research paper on city planner Maurice Rotival.
Barendregt-Ludwig presents on New Haven PERL's purpose.
“[People and the environment] is defined broadly, which is really important,” said Barendregt-Ludwig, referring to the 200 sources currently uploaded to the PERL website that cover everything from climate change and nutrition to housing and public safety.
New Haven PERL is made possible by a Yale Planetary Solutions Seed Grant and the Rosenkranz Award for Pedagogical Advancement, and it is housed under EliScholar, Yale’s online academic research publishing platform.
EliScholar is open to the public, making it “easier for community members and groups to find history and research in the areas that matter to them.” Barendregt-Ludwig placed emphasis on the fact that “this is not only Yale research,” noting that while PERL’s scope will remain New Haven-centric, she hopes to expand the website’s contributor pool to nearby institutions.
New Haven PERL accepts submissions from the last ten years authored by students, teachers, scientists, and community and government organizations.
Attendees included students, teachers, scientists, and collaborators.
Amanda Glatter, Barendregt-Ludwig’s 2023 research assistant and a 2024 graduate of the Yale School of Public Health, offered insight into how New Haven PERL came about: “It’s an issue that had been brought up a lot in the past by members of the community who had been interviewees for projects but had never seen the fruits of students’ labor.”
“We’ve been very careful throughout this whole process… we’ve had so many interviews, both individual and group meetings, where we’ve discussed ideas with students and people who work here and at other schools.”
As a research assistant, Glatter focused on designing the website and compiling resources to populate it. “What I’ve learned a lot from this project is, like, how slow you have to go to make something sustainable and to make something actually happen.”
When asked about her hope for the website’s legacy, Glatter said, “I think it’s easy to make a website, it’s harder to have people contribute to it. I really hope that people use it to maybe support a policy, or that students will submit community-based projects to the website, because that’s how it stays an active, living website that can influence people’s ideas.”
“It takes a community to make an idea happen,” added Barendregt-Ludwig, “and it’s a living website, so we need submissions!”
Following the presentation, “the community” dug into tubs of ice cream catered by Ashley’s.
Rainbow ice cream.