Northeastern University

Pioneer Valley Planning Commission (PVPC)

The Pioneer Valley Planning Commission (PVPC), the regional planning agency for Hampden and Hampshire Counties, serves as action research partner for Holyoke and Chicopee. This research is led by Timothy Brennan and Shaun Hayes of the Regional Information Center, the Commission’s research department. The PVPC has collaborated with both cities on a variety of planning initiatives for over forty years, including a regional economic development plan, an evaluation of a Chicopee Public Schools grant program, and a regional public safety strategy. The Commission has built strong working relationships with a number of Shannon CSI partners through these and other projects. For the Shannon initiative, the PVPC collects and analyzes data from intervention programs on an ongoing basis to help evaluate and refine the cities’ strategies. To build on partners’ understanding of area violence, they interview service providers, observe targeted intervention sites, and map police and demographic data to put crime patterns into neighborhood context.

Contacts:
Kimberly Tobin
Westfield State College
E-Mail: ktobin@wsc.ma.edu