At the Institute for Urban Policy Research, we believe that wholeness is the fundamental measure of a city’s (or a nation’s) success. Wholeness is a moral and political imperative, but data strongly suggest that it is also an economic imperative. That is, cities and regions with less disparity enjoy better overall economic growth—and spend less on prisons, emergency medical care and other band-aids for disparity—than those that are less whole.

Most attempts to measure how a city is doing rely on averages. If some people’s situations improve (in terms of wealth, say) and a roughly equal number of people’s situations worsen, the average stays about the same. But averages don’t experience life—people do.