Our Research

A unique aspect of ICE has been its commitment to conducting research since the organizations' inception. In conjunction with Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), using neighborhood businesses and specifically the businesses ICE serves as its research pool, ICE and ICIC will develop research and case studies of different kinds of businesses that operate in the inner city, focusing on the social as well as economic ways in which these businesses contribute to the community. ICE will also assess the impact of its own work by studying how neighborhood entrepreneurs and their communities build on the skills and resources that business owners acquired through ICE's programs.

The research partnership between ICIC-Boston and ICE will produce the most up-to-date analyses of neighborhood economic viability for neighborhoods in the city of Boston. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, this project will provide community leaders with the kinds of information they need in order to promote economic development in their neighborhoods and would-be investors with the information they require to make loans and grants to existing business owners. ICIC has amassed a great deal of economic and demographic information for every neighborhood in the city of Boston. Researchers at Boston University who are affiliated with ICE will work with staff from ICIC-Boston in order to analyze these data on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis and for such specific neighborhood projects as ICIC-Boston deems advisable. Other members of the Boston University/ICE research team will undertake qualitative studies of individual businesses in their community setting. This will allow ICE to explore in greater detail all the ways in which local businesses serve their community and customers beyond providing a service or selling goods. Members of the research team, having interviewed business owners, customers, and employees, will take this information and produce a profile of the way that certain types of businesses (e.g., bodegas) act in their communities or how different businesses in the same neighborhood relate to their community.