The Urban Commons:

How Data and Technology Can Rebuild Our Communities

EvoS Seminar
5:15 PM, S1-149
Monday March 2, 2020

About the Seminar

Many have heralded the arrival of “smart cities,” but wherein lies their promise? This talk will explore this question through the example of Boston’s 311 system, which enables constituents to report issues in public spaces, like potholes, graffiti, and litter. Such problems are no one person’s responsibility but affect everyone’s quality of life, and the 311 is a novel channel for everyday urbanites to address the age-old problem of maintaining shared spaces and infrastructure—that is, custodianship in the urban commons. While deeply practical, this also touches upon classical questions in evolutionary science regarding how and why people contribute to the collective good, and the implications this has for functioning society. The rich database of reports generated by the 311 system tells this story of custodianship, and in doing so reveals broader lessons. What are the evolved motivations that underlie the commons? How do these both give rise to the potential and limitations of “civic technologies” that engage constituents in the collaborative deployment of public services? Further, the extended research agenda on 311 in Boston illustrates the burgeoning field of urban informatics, highlighting the way that modern digital data can support a new wave of research-policy collaborations that can advance both scholarship and policy on cities, and discussing the ways that universities and city governments can best partner to realize this opportunity.

About the Speaker

Dr. Daniel T. O’Brien is Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University. His primary expertise is in the use of modern digital data sets to better understand urban processes, particularly the social and behavioral dynamics of neighborhoods. He is Co-Director of the Boston Area Research Initiative, in which capacity he has worked extensively to build effective models of research-policy collaboration that help us to better understand and serve cities. His book The Urban Commons (2018; Harvard University Press) captures the intersection of his scholarly and institutional efforts, using the study of custodianship for neighborhood spaces and infrastructure through Boston’s 311 system to illustrate the potential of cross-sector collaborations in urban informatics. He earned his doctorate in Biology at Binghamton University and is a proud alum of the EvoS program.

All are welcome. For more information, contact Dr. Rolf Quam, EvoS Director, rquam (@) binghamton.edu, or Susan Ryan, EvoS Coordinator, sryan (@) binghamton.edu