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Cities@Tufts LecturesAuthor: Shareable
Tufts University and Shareable.net present Cities@Tufts, a free series exploring community innovations in urban planning. The live discussions are moderated by professor Julian Agyeman and the podcast is hosted by Shareable's Tom Llewellyn. The sessions will focus on topics such as Environmental justice vs White Supremacy in the 21st century; Sacred Civics: What would it mean to build seven generation cities; Organizing for Food Sovereignty; From Spatializing Culture to Social Justice and Public Space; Exploring Invisible Women Syndrome; The Introduction of Street Trees in Boston and New York; Design principles for the urban commons; and The Past, Present, and Future State of Cities. Language: en Genres: Courses, Education, Society & Culture Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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The Pointillistic City: Well-Being and Equity in Communities and their Places with Dan O'Brien
Episode 2
Friday, 24 October, 2025
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. Dan O'Brien is Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University and Director of the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI). His research focuses on equity in urban neighborhoods, including crime, environmental justice, and more. His three books, The Urban Commons (Harvard University Press; 2018), Urban Informatics (Chapman Hall / CRC Press; 2022), and The Pointillistic City (MIT Press; 2024), demonstrate the value of integrating data-driven science with community-oriented policy and practice. Resources Cities@Tufts Lectures explores the impact of urban planning on our communities and the opportunities to design for greater equity and justice with professor Julian Agyeman. Cities@Tufts Lectures is produced by Tufts University and Shareable.net with support from Barr Foundation, Paige Kelly is our co-producer and audio editor. The original portrait of Dan O'Brien was illustrated by Jess Milner. The series is co-produced and hosted by Tom Llewellyn. "Light Without Dark" by Cultivate Beats is our theme song.
