On November 3, 2025, the Initiative on Cities and the Boston University Department of Sociology hosted a special session of the Urban Inequalities Workshop featuring Dr. Daniel T. O’Brien, Director of the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI) and Professor at Northeastern University. Dr. Yeşim Sungu-Eryilmaz, Director of City Planning & Urban Affairs at Metropolitan College, and Dr. Steven Schmidt, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston University, joined Dr. O’Brien in conversation about his latest book, The Pointillistic City.
Dr. O’Brien’s research examines how neighborhood social conditions shape the definition of equity, with a focus on community well-being and place. He posed a simple question to the audience: “Where do you live?”
From London to East Boston, audience members shared the neighborhoods, cities, and regions they identify with. When one remarked that they live “on Earth,” the room burst into laughter. This variation of responses reflects O’Brien’s conclusion that where someone lives is a matter of scale. “All those scales are impacting us… like a pointillistic painting,” O’Brien observed. He is most interested in studying where these dots come together to form a cohesive picture.
His research interest is a direct response to the observation that urban science has focused exclusively on neighborhoods’ effects on well-being. While studying the neighborhood as a unit of analysis, he also analyzes how processes at both lower and higher levels shape life, including micro-spatial inequities that have historically been overlooked.
With BARI, O’Brien concluded that processes at all geographic scales matter, but more localized ones are often more evident. People tend to notice what is happening directly around them rather than a more diffuse issue. Neighborhoods are mosaics of their places; places are not microcosms of neighborhoods.
O’Brien urged audience members to treat neighborhoods as mosaics of diverse places, identifying local processes as the basis for intervention. When addressing environmental justice, for instance, the impacts of climate change are more visible in our own communities.
The explosion of technology in recent years has driven community-led, science-driven solutions that influence equitable policy, practice, and design. O’Brien advocated for greater accessibility of urban informatics, a subfield of big data to understand and serve communities: such tools “need to be taken out of the Ivory Tower…and into the hands of communities to serve their own purposes.” To O’Brien, the most effective interventions are those rooted in community expertise and priorities.
Since 2012, BARI has partnered with the Problem Property Task Force (PPTF), an initiative established by the late Mayor Tom Menino, to identify and address properties with persistent criminal activity and violations of sanitation and building codes. Community members identified complaints into four categories to develop problem property interventions. The vast majority of properties report no crime or exposure to crime. Other complaints involve property damage, physical crimes, or both. Tracking eviction filings and blighted properties, BARI has observed how landlords seek to evict “problematic” tenants. Living with a formerly incarcerated relative, for example, may jeopardize the family’s housing security. Place management success occurs when the program is aligned with the community’s needs. O’Brien posed: “How are we supporting and not just making them the scapegoats? Should we send cops or social workers?” In some cases, this question still has a microgeographical aspect.
Using East Boston as a case study, O’Brien studied how high biogeophysical factors, such as heat, pavement, and microtopography, affect environmental hazards. The results reveal that injustice lies in exposure and sensitivity, with policy failing to identify those most at risk. He emphasized the importance of “holding multiple scales in focus at once.” How do these micro-spatial efforts fail to adapt to policy? The scale of the impact differs from that of the infrastructure. O’Brien envisioned a citywide framework while acknowledging the risk of keeping planning fragmented at the local scale.
O’Brien proposed a new paradigm of governance, one where those who are invested in something are the ones in power. A nested organization structure gives individual neighborhoods autonomy and control over addressing neighborhood issues, such as displacement. This “give-and-take” between top-down and bottom-up planning feeds into the broader master plan of the city, safeguarding against more powerful groups from taking over institutions. The Harlem Children’s Zone is a unified social service organization that provides educational opportunities for urban youth in the neighborhood, enhancing overall community enrichment. O’Brien highlighted the process of negotiation between big data and community narratives, and between public agency and local organization: “Let the conversation play out… change the model.”
A collaborative process that gathers local input and develops solutions is crucial to advancing the well-being of urban communities. O’Brien concluded the discussion with a lasting message: “A theory of practice can only go so far… the thing has to be done by people and institutions.”