What Lies Beneath: How the History of Boston Impacts its Water Quality Today
Principal Investigator Co-Principal Investigator Associate Professor Robinson Fulweiler and Ph.D. candidate Timothy Maguire will conduct a study on the urban groundwater and runoff in Boston to investigate the causes, effects, and extent of nutrient non-point pollution in urbanized subterranean estuaries. Publications Fulweiler, Robinson and Timothy Maguire. 2016. Urban Dissolved Silica: Quantifying the Role of Groundwater […]
Characterizing Urban Areas in the 21st Century: A Data-driven Approach
Principal Investigator Co-Principal Investigator Professors Sucharita Gopal and Nathan Phillips use a data-driven approach to define sustainability, resiliency, and metabolism metrics to provide cities across the globe with better ways to use data to address real urban challenges by examining the cities of Boston, New York, and Melbourne. Their research seeks to answer the following […]
Engineering Main Street: The Spatial Dimension of Organizations and Revitalization in Boston
Principal Investigator Co-Principal Investigator Ph.D. candidate Taylor Cain, under the advisement of Professor Japonica Brown-Saracino, seeks to identify how place attributes (including income, racial/ethnic composition, and residential and commercial property values) influence the strategies for and consequences of revitalization in two geographically proximate Main Streets business districts in Boston. Presentations “Competitive Streets: Do Market Driven […]
What Mayors Think: National Politics in Local Policy
Principal Investigator Co-Principal Investigator In their new study, Assistant Professors Katherine Einstein and David Glick, lead authors of the 2014 and 2015 Menino Survey of Mayors, will combine extensive mayoral interview data with municipal capital expenditures, mayoral support for city ordinances and mayoral demographic data. They evaluate the extent to which national policies influence local […]
The Choices, Experiences, and Role of Second Homeowners in Boston
Principal Investigator Co-Principal Investigator Led by Ph.D. candidate Meaghan Stiman under the advisement of Professor Japonica Brown-Saracino, this study seeks to understand a rarely studied class of urban resident: the second homeowner. Stiman will evaluate how Boston second homeowners frame their residential choices and experiences, their civic, cultural, and economic contributions, and their impact on […]
Multi-Party Computation Software to Evaluate Pay Equity in the City of Boston
Principal Investigator Co-Principal Investigator Continuing a project that began in November 2014, Professor and Hariri Institute Director Azer Bestavros sought to create a proprietary software tool to enable area corporate employers to anonymously share employee wage data by gender, race/ethnicity, and level. The goal is to track the gender wage gap across thousands of employees […]
IOC Open House – Thursday, September 24, 2015
The Initiative on Cities (IOC) welcomes Boston University students, faculty, and staff back to campus with an Open House reception on Thursday, September 24th from 5:00pm – 7:00pm. Join us at the IOC (75 Bay State Rd.) for drinks, food, and a chance to meet scholars and practitioners interested in cities and urban issues. Learn […]
Our Towns Tomorrow
How can New England’s small and medium-sized cities and towns best leverage infrastructure investment to support economic growth, resilience, and strong communities? Alongside the Congress for the New Urbanism – New England Chapter and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, the Initiative on Cities was proud to host “Our Towns Tomorrow: Infrastructure Investment and Economic Development […]
Mayor Karl Dean To Serve as IOC’s First Mayor In Residence
The Initiative on Cities (IOC) is pleased to announce that Mayor Karl Dean of Nashville, Tennessee, will join the Boston University community for the Spring 2016 semester as the first IOC Mayor in Residence. Following two successful terms as Mayor of Nashville, which will conclude in September 2015, and an appointment as Distinguished Visiting Professor […]
IOC Director Graham Wilson Announces 2015 Menino Survey of Mayors
On Friday, June 19th, at the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) Annual Meeting in San Francisco, Initiative on Cities (IOC) Director Graham Wilson took the stage in front of over 250 American Mayors and their staff to officially kick off the 2015 Menino Survey of Mayors. First conceived under the late IOC Co-Founder and […]