A new Law School project.

The Milwaukee area is enriched by the wide variety of organizations dedicated to the improvement of our collective well-being.

Consider the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s promotion of civic conversation through its “On the Table” initiative.

Or the Zilber Family Foundation’s Neighborhood Initiative, which focuses on specific neighborhoods to promote improvement and collective action.

Or think about the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee, which serve more than 5,000 children a day with academic and recreational programming after school. Or the United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County, which provides critical support to individuals and families through more than 100 community organizations. (It is especially noteworthy that the United Way joins the efforts of residents in Milwaukee and Waukesha counties, a welcome alliance.)

Marquette University has played its own part in community affairs for more than a century. In the past decade, this role has included the Law School’s public policy initiative, with dozens of events a year as part of the “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” series, candidate debates and conferences on education issues, water resources and our place in the Chicago “megacity.” Since 2012, the Marquette Law School Poll has provided a deep look at the issues that often divide us, though also some that show our common concerns, as well as who supports which candidates and why. These activities prompted the Journal Sentinel to describe the Law School as “Milwaukee’s public square.”

Now the Law School is setting out on a new and expanded initiative. In April, the Law School announced the creation of the Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education. The center is supported by a gift of $7 million from Sheldon and Marianne Lubar. The Lubar Center will support a variety of initiatives, the first of which we announce here: “The Milwaukee Area Project,” or MAP.

MAP seeks to examine public opinion, public policy and conditions throughout the region. Our role is descriptive rather than prescriptive, focusing on providing the best information available about opinions, conditions and opportunities, and inviting public discussion of the full range of proposals to address those conditions.

The “Milwaukee area,” as we conceive it, includes the region surrounding Milwaukee County, such as Ozaukee, Washington, Waukesha and Racine counties. As the largest geographic concentration of people, jobs, cultural resources and economic output in Wisconsin, the Milwaukee area represents a vital center for social and economic development.

A central premise of the project is that the Milwaukee area is interdependent. Suburbs do not flourish without central cities. Healthy regions provide jobs to individuals from the least skilled to the most skilled and a wide range of housing, from affordable to extravagant. That is, no successful urban area exists as a monoculture of all poor or all rich, all urban or all suburban.

Yet, as with every urban center, our region faces persistent challenges of inequality, social disorder and concentrated poverty. Opportunity is not equally shared. The problems, as well as the promises of the area, will be our focus in the Milwaukee Area Project.

Through the Marquette Law School Poll, the MAP will conduct surveys of public opinion throughout the region, providing data unavailable through any other source. Topics will range from current public policy issues to respondents’ satisfaction with their neighborhood, sense of public safety, workforce training, social activities, religious attendance and attitudes toward different parts of the Milwaukee area.

The Lubar Center’s MAP will also bring state-of-the-art data-analysis tools to bear on a wide range of topics, using data from administrative records, census collections and economic reports.

Finally, the Milwaukee Area Project will present these data to the public and to elected officials through speakers, events and conferences at the Lubar Center in Ray and Kay Eckstein Hall, the home of Marquette Law School, and through presentations to community groups throughout the region.

The first conference will be Tuesday in Eckstein Hall and will include presentations by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Waukesha County Executive Paul Farrow and R.T. Rybak, former mayor of Minneapolis and head of The Minneapolis Foundation.

In short, the Milwaukee Area Project will address what we think, how we live and where we’re headed.

Mike Gousha is distinguished fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School, and Charles Franklin is poll director and professor of law and public policy there.