Sit down with Dan O’Brien and Nigel Jacob for a conversation on O’Brien’s latest book project, The Pointillistic City. This talk is free, open to the public, and will be held in person at the Central Library in Copley Square. Lunch will be served and registration is required to attend.

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. 

Nigel Jacob began his work as a scientist technologist and backed his way into becoming a humanist. He has been described as a “folk hero” of the Civic Innovation movement (Prof. Stephen Goldsmith) due to the breakthrough work he led at the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, a world-wide, first-of-its-kind Civic-Design action lab in Boston City Hall. Nigel  is a designer-experimentalist of civic systems. He works at the edges of systems where community overlaps with institutions to bring value to both. He works with neighborhoods and local institutions to explore (and prototype possible futures and to ensure they can collaborate to scale up these visions in order to keep their neighborhoods resilient and convivial for all.