At 2:50 p.m. on April 15, 2013, the first of two bombs exploded amid the crowds gathered at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. “That instant, that day, probably will never happen again,” says former Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino (Hon.’01), “but we have to prepare for it.”
To that end, nearly 200 people—mayors, police chiefs, emergency responders, and public health officials from across Massachusetts—gathered at BU in March 2014 for a daylong symposium, Leading Cities Through Crisis: Lessons from the Boston Marathon. Speakers included Menino and other city leaders, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (Hon.’14), bombing survivors, prominent journalists, and executives of area hospitals and businesses. They described how the city had prepared for—and so swiftly recovered from—a tragedy like the 2013 Marathon bombing.
The well-received symposium was the first official event of BU’s new Initiative on Cities (IoC), which aims to improve global understanding of pressing urban challenges, from population growth to health care provision—and provide usable solutions. Affiliated with BU’s Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, the IoC is codirected by Menino, who joined the University’s faculty earlier this year after completing his final term as Boston’s longest-serving mayor, and Professor Graham Wilson, chair of political science. The two men—an experienced city leader and a respected academic—embody the central goal of the IoC: to serve as a bridge between academic research and the real-life practice of city governance.
Initiative on Cities cofounders Graham Wilson (right) and Thomas M. Menino are bringing politicians such as Senator Elizabeth Warren to campus to bridge academic research and governance. Photo by Cydney Scott/BU Photography
“The Initiative on Cities is founded on a fundamental belief that cities can be centers of dynamism for their regions and their countries in terms of economic life, cultural life, and many other aspects of what makes a good and successful society,” says Wilson. Cities hold this potential now more than ever; more than 50 percent of the world’s people live in urban areas, and that number will grow to 68 percent by 2050, according to the United Nations.
In the coming years, city leaders will tackle challenges ranging from poverty and disease to rising sea levels—all of which are topics of research at BU. “We’ve got a lot of terrific urban expertise here at Boston University, scattered all over campus,” says Wilson. “We don’t have a department of urban studies, but in fields such as sociology and public health, we’ve got expertise that can be of use to urban leaders who are trying to make a difference.”
Much of that know-how is found within the College of Arts & Sciences. Department of Earth & Environment faculty members Lucy Hutyra and Nathan Phillips, for example, are experts in measuring the carbon footprint of cities, which produce nearly 70 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions despite covering just 3 percent of the Earth’s surface.
In the sociology department, Associate Professor Japonica Brown-Saracino studies gentrification and the way this revitalizing process affects the character of city neighborhoods.
Brown-Saracino’s research will be featured at a forthcoming major IoC symposium, Urban Dynamism and Historic Preservation. While the March Marathon discussion attracted a regional audience, Wilson expects that symposium to be a global gathering.
“We’ve got a lot of terrific urban expertise here at Boston University, scattered all over campus. We don’t have a department of urban studies, but in fields such as sociology and public health, we’ve got expertise that can be of use to urban leaders who are trying to make a difference.”
The IoC also plans to host more intimate events. Some will be practical working sessions, with experts from different cities gathering to share ideas. Others will provide a forum for BU faculty to share work-in-progress with one another. “Too often,” says Brown-Saracino, “people studying an urban topic speak primarily with others within their own disciplines. Having an initiative on campus that will allow political scientists and sociologists and ecologists and anthropologists and architects to all be in conversation with one another is very important.”
Wilson envisions the IoC hosting “Boston Conversations” with the city’s civic and cultural leaders—perhaps the heads of the Museum of Fine Arts or the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. “The aim there,” he says, “is to hold events that will interest everybody, including alumni, staff, faculty, and students who live in or care about Boston.”
To further engage students, the IoC has two fellowship programs. The Boston program provides a $5,000 stipend to a BU graduate student who will spend a summer working for the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, which pilots initiatives aimed at improving city services in areas such as education and sustainable design. The first recipient was Cortney Tunis (GSM’15). The global fellowship program provides funding for graduate and undergraduate students who have secured unpaid internships in city government anywhere in the world. The inaugural recipient of that award was Chelsea Desrochers (SPH’15), who interned for 12 weeks with the Ayunamiento (City Hall), Santo Domingo Norte, Dominican Republic, shadowing officials and working on community outreach and youth engagement programs.