2025 Greater Boston Housing Report Card
By The Boston Foundation, November 12, 2025 Boston, MA – A new report on the current state of housing in Greater Boston presents a picture of strong construction, a concerning trend in building permits, and critical affordability challenges in the region. The mixed signals are the focus of the 2025 Greater Boston Housing Report Card, […]
Short-Term Rentals in Boston: Regulation, Compliance, and Impact
The Boston University Initiative on Cities and the School of Hospitality Administration released a new brief examining how Boston’s short-term rental (STR) regulations are working in practice. The brief summarizes key insights on how the rules have reshaped the size and characteristics of the city’s STR market, as well as what the data reveal about […]
Third Spaces Zine: Call for Submissions
The Boston University Initiative on Cities is excited to launch Third Spaces: an interdisciplinary, student-led zine that brings together diverse stories on urbanism. Third Spaces celebrates the rich diversity of city life. We foster relationships across communities and hold civic leaders accountable to public needs. Through an interdisciplinary approach, Third Spaces addresses urban inequalities to […]
Seed Funding Opportunity: Pilot Partnerships in Massachusetts
GUDL is launching a special, time-limited pilot program to support the development of partnerships addressing gentrification and displacement in Massachusetts. We invite local organizations and individuals to submit requests for collaboration for a chance to receive seed funding in early 2026. This pilot aims to foster new, cross-sector partnerships that bridge local knowledge, research, and policy to […]
Meet Josh Lown, Postdoctoral Research Associate
We’re excited to introduce and welcome our new Postdoctoral Research Associate, Josh Lown! Josh was born and raised in Michigan and received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Michigan State University. Soon after finishing his master’s program in social work, he moved to the Boston area to begin his PhD in social work, where his […]
Age and Homeownership Drive the Local Turnout Gap
In this article, we use a national voter file to compare turnout in general, midterm, and off-cycle local elections in over 500 cities. We provide novel estimates of turnout gaps by race, age, and homeownership status in local elections, and identify stark inequalities compared with national and state elections. We find sizable turnout gaps both by age and homeownership status at the local levels, far exceeding those in national contests.
IOC Releases 2025 Annual Report
The Boston University Initiative on Cities (IOC) is proud to share our 2025 Annual Report, marking 11 years of impact. This past year, we deepened our role as an interdisciplinary hub for urbanists — bridging research and practice, leading place-based experiential learning programs, and expanding connections with partners locally, nationally, and globally. Together, these efforts […]
How Do Crises Impact Policy Debates? The shifting national landscape of discourse on rental housing in the USA
How do crises impact national policy debates? We find that the crisis of COVID-19 expanded and changed the structure of discourse: from a smaller conversation pre-COVID-19 in which public and subsidized housing prevailed toward an explosion during the pandemic on eviction protections and rent controls, followed by a larger emphasis on discrimination.
Association Between Racial Equity Plans and Political and Sociodemographic Factors in US Cities
Understanding cities’ approach to addressing inequities is important for measuring progress and developing effective strategies. From May to August 2023, we implemented topic and regression modeling approaches to assess how the 200 largest cities in the USA were planning to implement strategies to address racial inequity.
The Initiative on Cities Joins Leading Global Institutions in Launching Alliance to Advance Human-Centric Urban Research
By Singapore Management University July 2, 2025 (Vienna, Austria) – Five globally respected academic institutions have come together to launch the Global Alliance on Sustainable Urban Societies – a pioneering initiative that places people at the heart of urban research and policymaking. The partnership was announced today at the Singapore Management University (SMU) City Dialogues […]