Projects

Below is a list of projects pursued by BARI. To learn more about the data, findings, policy implications, and learning opportunities for each project, click on the titles below.

• “Seeing” Neighborhoods through “Big” Data: Modern administrative data—from 311 and 911 calls to building permit applications to Tweets—offer a detailed view of events and conditions across the city.
• Problem Properties: In 2011, Mayor Menino established the Problem Properties Task Force, an inter-departmental initiative focused on identifying and responding to properties where there is persistent criminal activity and violations of the sanitation and building codes.
• Making “Smart Cities” Smarter: The “age of smart cities” is upon us, and yet no one appears to know what that means. Although interconnected technologies, like sensors, kiosks, and autonomous vehicles, promise to transform the urban landscape, their potential is largely undefined.
• Custodianship in the Urban Commons: BARI has worked closely with the Mayor’s Office of New urban Mechanics and the 311 system examine how Bostonians contribute to the maintenance of the public spaces and infrastructure of neighborhoods—that is, custodianship in the urban commons.
• Segregation and Urban Mobility: BARI researchers are analyzing everyday mobility patterns in the 50 U.S. largest cities and their commuting zones based on over 650 million geo-tagged micro-messages from Twitter collected over an 18-month period. A key paper describing these results is available from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS, 2018).
• Pursuing Equity in Boston Public Schools: In 2014 the Boston Public Schools (BPS) implemented a new school choice and assignment system that they have since sought to evaluate in collaboration with faculty from four local universities.