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 […]
Justice in Urban Climate Mitigation
Principal Investigator Earth & Environment Associate Professor Anne Short seeks to examine climate action plans in 24 cities across the United States to determine if and how they integrate environmental justice into their goals. Professor Short undertakes this project in order to add to empirical evidence—of which there is little—examining justice in the context of […]
In the News: Professor Rotjan’s Urban Coral Project
Congratulations to Professor Randi Rotjan for receiving media coverage by WPRI 12 and ecoRI News on her urban coral project. Rotjan received an IOC Urban Research Award in 2017 to support her project, which analyzes the impact of microplastics and microbial films on urban coral. Concerned about the 4.8 to 12.7 million metric tons of […]
Executive Director Katharine Lusk Co-Authors Paper On Youth-led Participatory Budgeting
Katharine Lusk, Executive Director of the Initiative on Cities, co-authored a paper published last week by the Journal of Youth Studies. Lusk collaborated with Associate Dean Mary Elizabeth Collins, Professor Astraea Augsberger, and PhD Candidate Whitney Gecker, all from the Boston University School of Social Work, to explore youth-led participatory budgeting. The team worked with […]
Virtual Reality & Urban Ecology Teleport to Experience Urban Infrastructure on Dorchester Avenue
On October 25th, PhD candidates Yaxiong Ma and Jessica Wright demonstrated their virtual reality project on urban underground infrastructure. With the guidance of BU Earth & Environment professors Sucharita Gopal and Nathan Phillips, the two explored how to create a coordinated infrastructure system. Through a virtual reality headset created by Ma, users can teleport to four different views of Dorchester Avenue in […]
CO2 Fertilization in an Urban Green Roof
Principal Investigator Earth & Environment Ph.D. candidate Sarabeth Buckley will conduct a study on the impact of increased levels of CO2 on green roofs in urban areas. Specifically, Sarabeth will purposefully expose the plants on edible green roofs to increased CO2 by directing waste carbon dioxide (produced by human respiration) from the inside of buildings […]