Catalyzing a Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-University Urban Research Agenda in the Age of Digital Data

波士顿地区研究计划（BARI）是哈佛大学拉德克利夫高等研究院的一个新实体，旨在促进和追求跨学科、跨机构的城市研究议程，利用正在进行的数字革命带来的数据机会。拟议的项目将围绕三个主要活动进行组织，每一个活动都由BARI在波士顿地区大学、公共部门机构和私营公司的丰富数据持有者和用户网络提供支持：1)识别和采购描述大波士顿地区的人和地点的数据。2) BARI网络成员对原始合作研究的支持，利用下一代数据与传统数据源和新方法相结合。3)构建一个原型数据库，将支持当前研究议程的数据和从分析中产生的辅助数据集进行归档和编目，使未来的工作和教学应用能够在这些初始项目的基础上进行构建。近年来，城市中的许多公立和私立机构已经开始收集高质量到足够质量的行政数据，从社区状况的实时描述，到个人之间的交流和社区之间的移动，再到教育、卫生和经济部门的模式。这些新一代数据共同为创建城市中人类行为的全面图景提供了基础，这有可能改变整个社会、行为和经济科学的城市治理和行为理论模型。BARI旨在激发城市研究议程，利用这些数据，重点关注三个交叉主题：1)社区的稳定和变化，特别是社区及其居民相互影响的社会过程。2)城市的社会结构，或人际关系、态度和制度关系如何跨越社区，创造出一套连锁的结构，这些结构可能会影响资源分配和社区运作方式。3)认知和语境，特别是认知机制和文化叙事如何驱动城市社区的行为，以及这些行为对特定社区的特征及其与其他社区的关系产生的影响。提议的议程将由BARI的领导团队，一组来自哈佛大学和东北大学的经验丰富的城市学者，以及更广泛的BARI网络承担，该网络拥有100多名成员，包括来自波士顿地区10所大学的教师和来自一系列政府机构和私营公司的专家。该项目还将与芝加哥等其他城市的倡议合作，旨在产生可推广的知识和可移植的方法策略。更广泛的影响本项目产生的学术著作将有助于利用下一代数据丰富内容的计算社会科学的发展。由此产生的见解也将为教学和政策创新提供基础，BARI与公共部门的紧密联系加强了从研究到实践的转化。最后，拟议项目的努力和成果将为其他城市的类似工作铺平道路，并有助于比较城市科学。

The Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI), a new entity based at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, proposes to catalyze and pursue a cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional urban research agenda that capitalizes on the data opportunity presented by the ongoing digital revolution. The proposed project will be organized around three main activities, each supported by BARI's rich network of data holders and users at Boston-area universities, public-sector agencies and private companies:1) The identification and procurement of data that describe the people and places of the greater Boston area.2) The support of original collaborative research by members of the BARI network that utilizes next-generation data in conjunction with traditional data sources and new methodologies.3) The construction of a prototype Data Library that archives and catalogs both the data supporting the current research agenda, and the secondary data sets that emerge from their analysis, enabling future work and teaching applications to build off these initial projects. Intellectual MeritIn recent years, many public and private institutions in cities have begun collecting administrative data from high to adequate quality, ranging from real-time descriptors of neighborhood conditions, to communication between individuals and movement between neighborhoods, to patterns in the education, health, and economic sectors. These next-generation data collectively provide a basis to create a comprehensive picture of human behavior in cities that has the potential to transform theoretical models of urban governance and behavior throughout the social, behavioral and economic sciences. BARI seeks to stimulate an urban research agenda that utilizes these data with a focus on three crosscutting themes: 1) Stability and change in neighborhoods, especially the social processes by which neighborhoods and their residents reciprocally shape each other across time.2) The social structure of the city, or how interpersonal, attitudinal, and institutional relationships that cut across neighborhoods create an interlocking set of structures that potentially influence resource allocation and the way that neighborhoods operate.3) Cognition and context, specifically how cognitive mechanisms and cultural narratives can drive behavior in urban neighborhoods, and the consequences those behaviors have for both the characteristics of a given neighborhood and its relationships with other neighborhoods. The proposed agenda will be undertaken by BARI's leadership team, a set of experienced urban scholars at Harvard and Northeastern Universities, and the broader BARI network, which has over 100 members including faculty from ten Boston-area universities and experts from a range of government agencies and private companies. The project will also collaborate with initiatives in other cities, such as Chicago, and is designed to yield generalizable knowledge and portable methodological strategies. Broader ImpactsThe scholarly works that emerge from this project will contribute to the development of a computational social science that utilizes the rich content of next-generation data. Resulting insights will also provide the basis for teaching and policy innovations, with the translation from research to practice enhanced by BARI's already strong ties with the public sector. Finally, the efforts and products from the proposed project will pave the way for similar work in other cities and contribute to a comparative urban science.