Urban Science Research Seminar: Daniel O'Brien
The Center for Urban Science + Progress (CUSP) and the Department of Technology Management and Innovation (TMI) at NYU Tandon welcome you to attend a lecture by Daniel T. O'Brien, professor of public policy and urban affairs and criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University, as part of the Spring 2025 Urban Science Research Seminar Series.
About the Lecture
The Pointillistic City extends the classic observation that “neighborhoods matter” for health and well-being, arguing that we need to pay more attention to the other geographic scales that we live at—including streets within neighborhoods and even properties within streets—and how they each affect us. This is analogous to a pointillistic painting, which is similarly organized into dots within objects and objects within a full image. This “pointillistic perspective” surfaces microspatial inequities, or disparities between people living in the same neighborhood, as a pressing and overlooked concern for our science, policy, and practice. The book illustrates this perspective through two civic research projects: one on the impact of problem properties on public safety; and the other on the pertinence of “urban heat islets” and other hyperlocal hazards to environmental justice. It ends with guidance for designing policies and practices that address microspatial inequities, with an emphasis on putting cutting-edge data in the hands communities.
About the Speaker
Dr. Daniel T. O’Brien is a leader of the burgeoning field of “urban informatics”, which uses modern digital data to better understand and serve local communities. He is a Professor in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University and Director of the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI), an interuniversity center that is an international model for advancing place-based, civically-engaged research that leverages data to benefit local communities.
Dr. O’Brien researches the physical and social conditions of neighborhoods and the citywide systems that serve them, often emphasizing questions of equity. This mission has allowed him to study many different subjects, including crime, education, transportation, climate resilience, public health, and public infrastructure, resulting in 50+ peer-reviewed publications and coverage from multiple media outlets, including Wired, The Boston Globe, and National Public Radio. He has raised $9M for his work, including grants from the National Science Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and others. His book The Urban Commons(Harvard University Press; 2018) won the American Political Science Association’s Dennis Judd Best Book Award for work on urban and local politics.
Dr. O’Brien has designed programs for educating and supporting others in the practice of urban informatics. BARI’s annual conference convenes researchers, public officials, community-based organizations, and others engaged in data-driven research and practice in greater Boston. BARI’s Boston Data Portal makes research-ready data describing the people and places of Boston accessible to multiple levels of data literacy, from data scientists to everyday residents. BARI also offers public urban informatics education for community-based organizations and high school students. His textbook, Urban Informatics (Chapman Hall / CRC Press; 2022), which is based on curricula he developed for Northeastern University’s Masters of Science in Urban Informatics, is freely available online.
Visitor Information
This event will take place in Room 233 (Co-Lab) at 370 Jay St. Please visit the NYU Tandon website for directions and a campus map. Advance registration through Eventbrite is required for campus access at NYU for external guests.
About the Urban Science Research Seminar Series
The Center for Urban Science + Progress’s annual Research Seminar series features leading voices in the growing field of urban informatics examining real-world challenges facing cities and urban environments around the world. The Spring 2025 series is organized by Assistant Professors Takahiro Yabe, Qi Sun, and Graham Dove.