Urban across the Country

Urban’s researchers partner with state and local leaders to provide the evidence, tools, and support they need to improve lives and strengthen communities. This work includes strategic advising to translate research into action, program evaluations to measure effectiveness, and research and data analysis to inform decisionmaking. Our experts develop custom data tools and modeling to support equitable resource allocation and lead community-engaged research and convenings to ensure policies reflect local priorities.

Use this page to explore Urban’s work. Search by region to see examples of our research, and filter by evidence and products to narrow results by topic or type of work.

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Journal Article Choice Characteristics and Parents' Child Care Decisions
Choice models are a key tool of empirically oriented rational choice researchers. However, most researchers do not have the information they need to adequately test their hypotheses and rely solely on individual characteristics of the choosers. The lack of information on the options and constraints
Research Report Enterprise Housing Divestiture in the Russian Federation
This article probes the financial and legal implications of Russian enterprise housing divestiture from the perspective of municipalities and enterprises. Since the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that privatizing enterprises divest their housing stock to local authorities. While
Research Report Coordinated Community Responses to Domestic Violence in Six Communities
This report presents the results of a project that examined coordinated community responses to domestic violence and focuses on communities that are attempting to incorporate non-justice system services and stakeholders into their responses. It details each community's efforts, including the history
Research Report State General Assistance Programs: 1996
This report summarizes results of a state-by-state survey on the status of General Assistance (GA) programs in 1996. Data were collected to determine whether such programs exist in each state, eligibility requirements and benefit levels, and caseload and expenditure data. It also reports on program
Brief Are Justice and Inequality Compatible?
Equality and justice are certainly among the most basic of American ideals, yet the distribution of American income is severely unequal throughout the population. This brief attempts to decide whether or not this uneven distribution is fair, that is, whether it is compatible with justice. First
Brief When to Devolve
This paper argues that it is generally desirable to give states responsibility for development programs while reserving to the federal government responsibility for redistribution. The paper examines the following issues with an eye to the allocation of responsibility between state and federal
Brief Economic Mobility in the United States
The authors review a number of studies that have focused on the income gap between the rich and the poor in the United States and discuss the following topics: the relationship between size and availability of economic rewards in American society; economic mobility in the United States; and cross
Brief The Public Can Make Hard Choices
This paper describes the findings from a series of public meetings called the Exercise in Hard Choices. The Exercise consists of a budget decisionmaking game for self-selected members of the public working in groups. It is used to estimate the public's ability to discuss and resolve complex policy