News & Events

Late last year, a small group of people gathered in front of the Belmont, Massachusetts Select Board to present possibilities for the future of an underdeveloped area of the town. The presenters were deeply invested in sharing the community-driven vision...

Thursday afternoon, students from the Harvard Kennedy School Urban Politics Field Lab presented to town officials and members of the community the development priorities identified by key stakeholders in the Brighton Street corridor. The Harvard students...

When Mary Treacy arrived at the Harvard Kennedy School, she thought her future might lie in academic economics. Instead, two Greater Boston Field Labs—one studying Boston’s Open Newbury Street program, another modeling redevelopment options in Long Beach...

Congressman Seth Moulton (MA-6th) and Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll joined nearly 200 Harvard alumni on June 18 for a convening marking the impact of 20 years of the Greater Boston Applied Field Lab, a landmark experiential learning...

As an HKS student, you might assist a newly elected mayor transition into office; spend the summer interning in a governor’s office; or work with public officials to tackle issues related to transportation, real estate development, or homelessness.

“Experiential learning provides practice, but it also provides a deeper understanding of each concept’s importance and how the concepts interact. Classroom lessons tend to make topics seem more black-and-white than they truly are. Once you start applying...

“I’ve been doing urban planning studies for more than 15 years at HKS, over 100 projects,” said Linda Bilmes, speaking of the field labs that give her students the opportunity to analyze real-world issues and offer solutions. “Using virtual reality...

As housing costs soar in major cities across the United States, inclusionary zoning is an attractive option debated among planners and policymakers. Inclusionary zoning (IZ), a city-enacted ordinance that requires builders to set aside a percentage of...

In his final year at Harvard Kennedy School, Andrew Levine MPP 2017 joined a group of graduate students conducting research and analysis to help then-Mayor Martin J. Walsh figure out whether the city of Boston should pursue a tax hike to fund major...

The urban field lab work stretches back to 2005, when Kennedy School students began heading out to cities and towns for on-the-ground learning and fieldwork. Those students didn’t have to travel far. Just a few miles up Massachusetts Avenue, in not-yet...

Kennedy School study puts annual Mass. costs at $64 billion, hopes figure will be used as a comparison in mass-transit spending decisions

As part of the collaboration between the Bloomberg Harvard program and Phoenix, last spring HKS Professor Linda Bilmes, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and an expert on public finance, led a city field project.

The Rappaport Institute was an early supporter of Bilmes’ experiential learning lab program, which sent her public finance students to work in Greater Boston, the MBTA, and dozens of local jurisdictions. The class developed a new model in which city...

The 23 students, who are enrolled in an advanced budgeting course taught by former U.S. Department of Commerce Assistant Secretary Linda Bilmes, examined operations related to emergency communications, snow plowing, street lights, parking meters and...

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino met with students in Linda Bilmes’ advanced budgeting and financial management course at HKS to encourage them to use their skills to help the Hub weather its current financial storm. This spring her students will undertake...

On October 24, Prof. Linda Bilmes was one of three witnesses called before the U.S. House Committee on the Budget for its first-ever hearing on the growing costs of the Iraq War. Bilmes, who teaches several budgeting courses, has become an oft-cited and...

The best-run city in Massachusetts is not its biggest. Tiny Somerville, wedged into a corner between Cambridge and Medford, is shockablock with cutting-edge ideas, from a city hot line to computerized tracking of city services to performance-based...

The students are embarked on a semester-long project to help Hull navigate the tricky waters of the federal bureaucracy, lending their manpower to a town whose budget constraints make manpower scarce, the students engaged in a rigorous program to...

It was an unlikely scene last fall, as 60 students from a graduate course on budgeting at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government descended on Somerville City Hall and its departmental outposts. Divided into teams of four or five, students sat with...