Imagining a More Playful Boston
“Wanna come over and play?” five-year-old me asked my best friend on the phone. What, exactly, we were going to “play” wasn’t defined—at that age, everything had the potential to be playful, from toys and games to cardboard boxes to sticks. As we grow older, and as we become more scheduled, some of that openness […]
The Effects of Ethnically Segregated Urban Neighborhoods: Evidence from Malaysia’s New Villages
Principal Investigator Economics Ph.D. candidate Jia De Gedeon Lim will conduct a study of the impact of the “New Village Program” in British Malaya on the current urban prosperity and interethnic preferences of urban dwellers in Malaysia. Specifically, he will examine the effects of long-run ethnic segregation from The New Village Program, which was an […]
Past and Present IOC Summer Fellows Speak to Upward Bound High School Students
Boston University Upward Bound is a federally funded program to prepare low-income and first-generation college-bound students for success in higher education. Boston University’s Wheelock College of Education and Human Development runs the Upward Bound program for young people from Boston, who receive tutoring, take classes, and live on campus during the summer. This year, Dan […]
NLC Menino Fellow Augustine Jimenez Completes Fellowship
Looking back on my spring semester in Washington, D.C. reminds me of how much growth I owe to my Boston University Initiative on Cities 2018 Menino Fellowship. Working at the National League of Cities’ Institute for Youth, Education and Families introduced me to new people, ideas, and an entirely new perspective on what it means […]
Impact of Natural Disasters on City Integrity
Principal Investigator Economics PhD candidate Giovanna Marcolongo aims to use statistical analysis to examine the relationship between emergencies—defined as municipalities’ declaration of a “state of emergency”—and corruption in local government, particularly focusing on public procurement outcomes. In order to determine this correlation, Marcolongo will investigate whether municipalities in a “state of emergency” are more likely […]
Observing and Modeling Urban Boundary Layers Under Heat Waves
Principal Investigator Heat waves (HWs) are amongst the deadliest natural disasters and are one of the most important causes of weather-related mortality. Urban residents, which now account for more than 50% of the global population, are arguably more vulnerable to HWs due to the urban heat island (UHI) effect wherein cities are usually hotter than […]
Cities in the Realm of State Preemption Laws
Principal Investigator Media accounts and political organizations have increasingly highlighted a surge of state preemption laws that restrict the autonomy of cities. Political Science Ph.D. candidate Luisa Godinez Puig will investigate the validity of said surge to prove if preemption laws have increased over time and, if so, which cities within the United States have […]
Community Archeology on the Urban Periphery: The Tlajinga District at the Nexus of Ancient Teotihuacan and Modern Mexico City
Principal Investigator Associate Professor David Carballo, who holds a joint appointment in Anthropology and Latin American Studies, will pioneer a new initiative of community-based archaeology at Teotihuacan, Mexico. Teotihuacan is an ancient Mesoamerican city and UNESCO World Heritage site whose urban periphery is being impacted by new construction associated with the sprawl of contemporary Mexico […]
Punishing Places: The Geography of Mass Imprisonment
Principal Investigator Sociology Assistant Professor Jessica Simes seeks to bridge the gap in sociological research between the political and economic causes of the prison boom and the neighborhood-level impacts of mass incarceration to help explain a phenomenon found in small cities and suburbs: a disproportionately high rate of imprisonment, compared to larger cities. For example, […]
Water Use Efficiency in Urban Street Trees
Principal Investigators Under the direction of Boston University Associate Professor Lucy Hutyra, Earth & Environment PhD candidate Sarah Garvey will examine water use efficiency among urban street trees in order to determine their climate sensitivity in relation to non-urban trees. Her research question is based on her lab’s recent work that suggests Boston’s street tree […]