Folding and Collaborating
In their CSSH essay, “Religion in the Folded City: Origami and the Boundaries of the Chronotope” (65-4, 2023), Robert P. Weller and Keping Wu “explore the complex interrelationships and workings of chronotopes through the idea of the fold,” which allows them to study what happens when different space-times touch and interact with each other. Their Behind the Scenes essay takes us into the past and the future of this work, as they describe the truly collaborative research and writing process that led to their insights and imagine ways to apply folding to contexts beyond what they analyze in the essay.
Former Governor Charlie Baker and Coauthor Talk about Their Book Results
Charlie Baker (center), former Massachusetts governor, and Steve Kadish (left), his former chief of staff, discussed their book Results: Getting Beyond Politics to Get Important Work Done (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022) during a panel discussion moderated by Siobhan Dullea (CAS’91) (right), Innovate at BU executive director, at the BUildLab November 2. Results is a manual for government and business leaders interested in results-oriented problem-solving. With several examples—spanning from rural broadband access to reform of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families to the COVID-19 pandemic—Republican Baker and Democrat Kadish show how to move from identifying problems to achieving results in a way that bridges instead of exacerbates divides.
Four at-large candidates take up the issues at BU Democrats forum
Nestled in womb chairs on a platform, four of the eight candidates seeking at-large seats on the Boston City Council in the Nov. 7 election fielded questions last Tuesday night (Oct. 3) from more than eighty students at a forum organized by Boston University College Democrats. The topics ranged from housing needs to climate change to the city’s ongoing crisis over drug use and recovery.
City council forum highlights need for accountability and transparency at institutions of higher education
Candidates running for Boston City Council At-Large gathered at Boston University on Oct. 3 to participate in a forum hosted by the Boston University College Democrats (BUCD) and the Boston University Initiative on Cities. Candidates fielded questions from a panel, which included Sean Waddington, president of BUCD, and Dhruv Kapadia, BU’s student body president, focusing on college students’ experiences and how candidates plan to hold higher education institutions and their administrations accountable to the public.
BU College Democrats Host City Council Forum
With this year’s Boston City Council election coming up on November 7, BU College Democrats invited candidates running for at-large seats to a candidate forum on October 3 at the Center for Computing & Data Sciences. Candidates Julia Mejia (from left), Erin Murphy, Henry Santana, and Ruthzee Louijuene responded to moderator questions and questions from students. The 13-member City Council is made up of 4 at-large councilors representing the entire city and 9 district councilors representing specific areas.
Katharine Lusk Named Executive Director of the Planning Advisory Council
Mayor Michelle Wu today announced Katharine Lusk as the inaugural Executive Director of the Planning Advisory Council, which was created by an Executive Order signed by Mayor Wu in January and will establish a coordinated Citywide vision for Boston’s future and create accountability for delivering on that vision. The council will be composed of Cabinet officials, including those overseeing housing, parks, equity and inclusion, arts, and transportation, to ensure that long-range City planning includes those perspectives. Lusk began working in her role on May 1, 2023.
Just Environmentalism
Climate change impacts in cities do not hit every resident equally. Consider Portland, Ore. Residents of Southeast Portland’s low-income and communities of color live with the carbon and particulate matter emitted from Interstate 5, which slices through the urban core. Heat waves disproportionately threaten residents who can’t afford air conditioning or who work outdoors. Portland’s tree canopy—which mitigates climate change by capturing carbon emissions—is more concentrated in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods west of the Willamette River. Low-lying communities on the east side of the river, which are less affluent and more Black and brown, are more vulnerable to extreme impacts from storms and flooding—like the 1996 flood that killed eight people and ruined countless businesses.
February 2023 Spotlight – Judith C. Scott, PhD
My primary research interest focuses on how trauma such as physical child maltreatment and racism (interpersonal and structural), protective processes including ethnic-racial socialization and coping, and contextual factors affects parenting and mental health among families across cultures. However, it was my secondary research interest in program evaluation that led to my interest in Asian children and families. Right before I started as faculty at Boston University, a community organization, Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, sent a request for an agency-level and community-level program evaluation. During the two-year evaluation, through talks with BCNC staff and reading existing literature, I realized that I rarely read about the perspectives and experiences of Chinese immigrant families living in low-income communities in relation to parenting.
Building a Better Boston: Behind the scenes at Boston City Hall, BU PhD candidates are solving problems small and big
If you walk through Boston City Hall, chances are you’ll bump into someone from BU working on the front lines, building a city that works for all. In recent years, several PhD candidates from BU have accepted fellowships or internships with the City of Boston, forming a brain trust and working on many of the city’s most ambitious initiatives. Some come from disciplines not traditionally thought of as feeders for public service—like history and sociology—but end up contributing in significant ways, many times picking up a love for municipal government that sticks. And many of those students arrive at City Hall via BU’s Initiative on Cities (IOC).
People on the Move in Boston: Loretta Lees | New Hire
Loretta Lees is an urban geographer and urbanist who is internationally known for her research on gentrification, urban regeneration, global urbanism, urban policy, urban public space, architecture, and urban social theory. Before moving to Boston University to serve as Faculty Director of the Initiative on Cities, she was professor of Human Geography at Leicester University and before that King’s College London in the UK.