Global projections of heat exposure of older adults
The global population is aging at the same time as heat exposures are increasing due to climate change. Age structure, and its biological and socio-economic drivers, determine populations’ vulnerability to high temperatures. Effects are most severe in Asia and Africa, which also have the lowest adaptive capacity. Our results facilitate regional heat risk assessments and inform public health decision-making.
Dan Li Publishes New Paper on Urban Heat and Will Become IOC’s New Urban-H Associate Director of Heat
Boston University Associate Professor of Earth & Environment Dan Li’s new publication, Persistent Urban Heat, with co-authors Linying Wang (Boston University), Weilin Liao (Sun Yat-sen University), Ting Sun (University College London), Gabriel Katul (Duke University), Elie Bou-Zeid (Princeton University), and Björn Maronga (Leibniz University Hannover), tackles the urban heat island effect and demonstrates that urban […]
New Brief: Political Lessons Learned from the Initial MBTA Communities Act Rollout
In partnership with the Initiative on Cities’ MetroBridge program and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), Urban-H Associate Director Katherine Levine Einstein and students enrolled in the Inequality in American Politics (CAS PO 519) course during the Fall 2023 semester recently published their findings concerning the implementation of the 2021 MBTA Communities Act (MBTA-C) in Arlington, […]
New Publication: “Municipal finance shapes urban climate action and justice”
2022 Early Stage Urban Research award recipient Claudia V. Diezmartínez recently authored a publication in Nature Climate Change alongside Co-PI Anne G. Short Gianotti. Their research focuses on municipal finance and urban climate action. Read the full abstract here: “Implementing climate policies and programmes in cities requires substantial investments that inevitably entangle climate action with […]
IOC Seed Funding to Study Classroom Air Quality Featured on BU SPH
Patricia Fabian, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Associate Director at the Institute for Global Sustainability, was recently featured in a BU SPH article highlighting her work on air quality in Boston Public School (BPS) classrooms. During her 2022-2023 sabbatical, Professor Fabian created a research partnership with the Boston Public Schools. […]
The urgency of properly engaged dialogue in urban research in the context of the new landscape of ‘shitification’
In my plenary for Dialogues in Urban Research I called for properly engaged dialogue in urban research and discussed my own attempts throughout my career (located as an outside-insider) to do just this. I am excited that those urban scholars invited to respond to my paper are on board – here I reply to the thoughtful and generous points made by Myfanwy Taylor; Steve Millington, Chloe Steadmann and Nikos Ntouris; Norma Rantisi; Jennifer Foster; John Lauermann; and Mark Boyle. I make the point that properly engaged dialogue is now more urgent than ever in the context of the new landscape of ‘shitification’.
New Publication: “Housing Movements and Care: Rethinking the Political Imaginaries of Housing”
The IOC’s Postdoctoral Research Associate Kenton Card recently authored a publication in Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography alongside UC Berkeley Associate Professor Desiree Fields and Western Sydney University Associate Professor Emma R. Power. Their work focuses on housing movements and housing as a form of care. Read the full abstract here: “Care is a […]
Housing Movements and Care: Rethinking the Political Imaginaries of Housing
As we discuss in this introduction to the Symposium, in such movements, care operates as connective tissue across households and modes of difference; challenges relations of racial capitalism and settler colonialism that underlie dominant understandings of who deserves and can demand care; and drives calls for public care and experiments with non-propertised forms of ownership. Housing systems are care infrastructures, making housing movements a vital place for care work.
New Publication: “Water sources for street trees in mesic urban environments”
2021 Early Stage Urban Research award recipient Ian Smith recently published in Science of The Total Environment with Co-PIs Pamela Templer and Lucy Hutyra. Smith, Templer, and Hutyra examine urban trees’ water sources, factoring in moderate moisture environments and their impact on urban communities. Their research finds that trees contribute to cities’ overall climate resiliency […]
New Publication: “What Constitutes Engaged Dialogue in Urban Research? Thoughts From a Long Time ‘Outside-Insider'”
Initiative on Cities Director Loretta Lees recently published a plenary in Dialogues in Urban Research focusing on inclusionary dialogue in urban studies and what needs to change. Read the abstract below: “In this plenary for the new journal Dialogues in Urban Research, I discuss what constitutes (and should constitute going forward) engaged dialogue in urban […]