2021 Table of Contents Urban Research Day 2021 Agenda 3 NYU Faculty Presentation Groups 4 Opening Speakers 6 Faculty Presenters 7 Doctoral Presenters 29 Urban Initiative Co-Directors 35 Faculty Advisory Committee 37 2020-21 Urban Doctoral Fellows 41 Resources 46 2 NYU Faculty Urban Research Day Friday, March 5, 2021 Goal: To convene faculty from across NYU to present concise summaries of their urban-related research as a way to share knowledge and increase scholarly collaboration Agenda: 12:30 – 12:35pm Welcome Cybele Raver, Deputy Provost, NYU 12:35 – 12:40pm Opening Remarks Sherry Glied, Dean, NYU Wagner 12:40 – 12:45pm Transition to Round 1 12:45 – 1:45pm Session 1 / 1B: Presentations + Panel Discussion 1:45 – 2:00pm Break 2:00 – 3:00pm Session 2: Presentations + Panel Discussion 3:00 – 4:00pm Session 3: Presentations + Panel Discussion 3 NYU Faculty Presentation Groups Session 1 and 1B (12:45- 1:45pm) Group Health Environment and Sustainability Zoom Link Link to Panel Link to Panel Moderator Jo Ivey Bouffard Andrea Silverman Presenters Constantine Kontokosta Andrea Silverman Emily Goldmann Charlie Mydlarz Filippa Juul Elizabeth Henaff Niyati Parekh Kevin Cromar Shlomo (Solly) Angel Rae Zimmerman Tae Hong Park Session 2 (2:00-3:00pm) Group Safety, Education, and Resilience Zoom Link Link to Panel Moderator Thomas Sugrue Presenters Debra Laefer Ingrid Gould Ellen Maurizio Porfiri Rachel M. Abenavoli Rajeev Dehejia 4 Session 3 (3:00-4:00pm) Group Urban Design, Planning & Governance Zoom Link Link to Panel Moderator Shlomo Angel Presenters Neil Klieman & Alex Shermansong Blagovesta Momchedjikova Jon Ritter Julia Payson Victoria Alsina 5 Opening Speakers Cybele Raver Deputy Provost, Professor of Applied Psychology Cybele Raver serves as Deputy Provost for NYU. She also maintains an active program of research, examining the mechanisms that support children's self- regulation in the contexts of poverty and social policy. Raver and her research team currently conduct CSRP, a federally-funded RCT intervention and she regularly advises local and federal government agencies and foundations on promoting school readiness among low-income children. See our new articles in American Psychologist downloadable from the list, below. Raver has received several prestigious awards from organizations such as the American Psychological Association and the William T. Grant Foundation as well as support from the Spencer Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation. Sherry Glied Dean, Professor of Public Service, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service In 2013, Sherry Glied was named Dean of New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. From 1989-2013, she was Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She was Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management from 1998-2009. On June 22, 2010, Glied was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services and served in that capacity from July 2010 through August 2012. She had previously served as Senior Economist for health care and labor market policy on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1992-1993, under Presidents Bush and Clinton, and participated in the Clinton Health Care Task Force. She has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and served as a member of the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking. Glied’s principal areas of research are in health policy reform and mental health care policy. 6 Faculty Presenters Rachel M. Abenavoli Steinhardt; Institute of Human Development and Social Change Rachel Abenavoli is a Research Assistant Professor of Applied Psychology at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Her research intersects developmental, education, and prevention sciences and examines the contexts, programs, and practices that drive children’s social-emotional and behavioral development, particularly across the transition to school. An overarching goal of her work is to identify and strengthen approaches with potential for scale and sustained impact. Guided by this aim, Dr. Abenavoli focuses on school systems as powerful levers for change, teachers as central agents and targets of intervention, and research-practice partnerships as a promising way to generate relevant, rigorous, and actionable evidence. For the last four years, Dr. Abenavoli has been engaged in a partnership with the NYC Department of Education Division of Early Childhood Education to use data and research to strengthen implementation of the city’s universal pre-K initiative, Pre-K for All. Dr. Abenavoli was an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Predoctoral Fellow and holds a Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from Pennsylvania State University. Research Descripition: Since 2014, researchers at NYU Steinhardt and district leaders in the NYC Department of Education’s Division of Early Childhood Education (DECE) have been engaged in a robust research-practice partnership to support and strengthen NYC’s universal pre-K program, Pre-K for All. We are currently launching a mixed- methods study with our district partners to better understand the challenges and stressors facing pre-K program leaders, teachers, and families—as well as the resilience, creativity, and innovation they are demonstrating—in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study also examines how these experiences vary across NYC neighborhoods, programs, and individuals, with implications for supporting program quality and advancing equity across the Pre-K for All system. Our NYU-DECE partnership is well positioned to gather critical information about the challenges facing pre-K programs and families and effective approaches that hold the greatest promise for supporting families during future disasters, as well. 7 Victoria Alsina CUSP, The Govlab Victòria Alsina Burgués is an Industry Assistant Professor and Academic Director at the NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress. She holds a B.A. in Political Science and Public Administration from Universitat Pompeu Fabra; an MPA from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; an M.A. in Public Leadership from ESADE Business School; and a Ph.D. in Political and Social Sciences from Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Research Description: Alsina’s current research and teaching focus on finding innovative solutions to rethink public institutions, exploring how collaborative governance and public engagement can change the way we govern, solving some of society’s most pressing problems at the intersection of the public and private sectors and helping communities and institutions to work together to solve public problems more effectively and legitimately. 8 Shlomo (Solly) Angel Marron Institute Shlomo (Solly) Angel is a Professor of City Planning and the Director of the Urban Expansion Program at the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University. He is the author of Planet of Cities (2012) and Housing Policy Matters (2000), the leading author of the Atlas of Urban Expansion—2016 Edition, and co- author of A Pattern Language (1977). Since 2012, he led teams assisting intermediate cities in Colombia and Ethiopia in preparing for their rapid expansion. Dr. Angel holds an architecture degree and a doctorate in City and Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley. Research Description: The findings introduced in this longitudinal study of cumulative Covid-19 cases and deaths are based on reported data for 384 U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) for 20 weeks, starting on 6 March 2020 and ending on 23 July 2020. We look at the variation in the 7-day averages of the cumulative numbers of reported cases and deaths in each city at the end of every week as a function of its total population, its ‘urbanized area,’ and its average population density (the ratio of its population and its urbanized area). We find that during the last 10 weeks, the numbers have tended to converge: (1) a city with double the population of a smaller one can be expected to have 17% more cases per capita and 28% more deaths per capita than the smaller city; (2) a city with double the urbanized area of a smaller one can be expected to have 19% more cases per capita and 38% more deaths per capita than the smaller city; and, finally, (3) a city with double the population density of a smaller one can be expected to have 4.1% fewer cases per capita and 7.4% fewer deaths per capita than the smaller city. Larger cities have more than their share of cases and deaths in part because the larger the city, the larger the number of possible interactions among its inhabitants. And it is this larger number, rather than the overall average proximity of people to each other—expressed by the average density in the city—that accounts for that larger share. In fact, when it pertains to Covid-19 cases and deaths, denser metropolitan areas appear to be better able to contain their numbers than more spread out ones. 9 Kevin Cromar Marron Institute of Urban Management, Grossman School of Medicine Kevin Cromar, Ph.D., is a program director at the Marron Institute of Urban Management and an Associate Professor of Environmental Medicine and Population Health at New York University Grossman School of Medicine. His research program works at the intersection of scientific research and public