Cities and Communities

BY NICHOLAS TALLANT Today is “Marathon Monday” and Boston’s annual Patriot’s Day celebration. But it also marks the five-year anniversary of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing—the largest terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11. After the attack, a research team from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government initiated an in-depth review of the […]

Singapore’s bike-sharing market has expanded dramatically in the past year. Huey Lee and Nicholas Lui explain the economics underlying the all-in strategy many firms have taken, how the firms can be profitable, and what the Government’s regulatory responses should be.

BY EMILY MIDDLETON Imagine a traffic system so smart that it can cut your commute in half. Imagine paths that heat up in winter, so you don’t have to walk in the snow. Imagine sensors that make it easier for the blind to get around the city, and quicker for ambulances to reach their patients. […]

In an increasingly anti-globalist era, what role might cities play in strengthening global governance? Jorel Chan examines three ways cities increase global connectivity, showing through the example of Singapore how cities are well-positioned to advance innovative solutions in the face of complex global governance challenges.

Extreme weather events made worse by climate change are wreaking havoc on cities worldwide. Al Lim evaluates Singapore’s climate resilience through the lens of the recent MRT flooding incidents, and explores how Singapore can strengthen social resilience as a community.

Jia Hui Lin writes that rideshare drivers need better social protection. She presents her findings from 68 interviews with Singaporean Uber and Grab drivers, and argues that drivers need more flexible savings options.

On this week’s episode of the Middle East Weekly, we discuss Sa’ad Hariri’s resignation from his post as Prime Minister of Lebanon; the earthquake that struck the Iran-Iraq border; and a coalition deal that allowed IS fighters to leave Raqqa.

“My apartment is everything I prayed for when I was locked up,” Morgan[1] says, his brown eyes twinkling. “Do you want to see it?” Morgan pulls his phone from his back pocket, turns the screen toward me, and opens a photograph of a bright galley kitchen with a couple of pots resting on the electric […]

Agile, iterative, pilot, scrum—these phrases may be common in the world of software development, but one would hardly expect to hear them tossed around the austere marble corridors of state government.  Yet they are common parlance in the Massachusetts Governor’s Office, where a nimble squad of problem-solvers is using every cutting-edge tool in the toolbox […]

BY ANGELICA QUICKSEY   “Explore. Experiment. Evaluate. Be delightful!” These words, beside a dry-erase drawing of a double-sided funnel, are scrawled across one of many whiteboard-coated walls in an office full of sticky notes, markers, and a quiet buzz of activity. The office sits on the fifth floor of Boston city hall and hosts a […]

BY MADISON CHAPMAN After a tumultuous August in Washington, one thing is certain: the Trump Administration will amend the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). President Trump met with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto at the July 7th G20 Summit, where each expressed a desire to conclude any NAFTA discussion by year-end. According to a […]

BY BENJAMIN CLAYTON I’m British, so I know what a waning superpower looks like. America, welcome to the club. In 2015, Joseph Nye, geopolitical analyst extraordinaire, published a book: “Is the American Century Over?” His answer: no. Across three dimensions of power – economic, hard, and soft – Nye concluded that only in the first […]