City of Boston and 100 Resilient Cities convene first-ever transatlantic policy lab program to assess inequality in the City

Today, Mayor Martin J. Walsh announced that the City of Boston and 100 Resilient Cities - Pioneered by The Rockefeller Foundation(100RC) launched the Transatlantic Policy Lab (TAPL), a meeting of top city and nonprofit officials, to address the ways inequalities in income and opportunity affect Boston's shared resilience-building efforts. Over the course of three days, attendees will develop policy recommendations to reduce systemic inequalities and build upon best practices from other cities in 100RC's network, with support from The Bertelsmann Foundation and The German Marshall Fund of the United States.  

The TAPL convening, hosted at the Roxbury Innovation Center, includes participation from Dr. Atyia Martin, Boston's Chief Resilience Officer; Alvaro Lima, Director of Research for the Boston Redevelopment Authority; Dolores Acevedo Garcia, Director of the Institute for Child, Youth and Family Policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University; and other resilience thought leaders in the private, public and nonprofit sectors.  

"This work is very important to the City of Boston," said Mayor Walsh. "There is no better time than now for us to lay the groundwork for our resilience efforts. This is one of the many stages of the process and I look forward to making deep-rooted systemic change to help address inequities in our City. I thank all of our partners for their collaboration in making this possible."  

"We're proud to provide best-in-class tools and services to foster resilience-building efforts at no direct cost to our member cities," said Liz Yee, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Solutions for 100 Resilient Cities. "By convening experts through the Transatlantic Policy Lab, we are poised to assist Boston's resilience-building efforts and identify where approaches can be scaled to address similar challenges in other cities."  

A member of the 100RC network since 2014, Boston's resilience-building efforts place a unique focus on social resilience in a city affected by historic and persistent divisions of race and class. In her role as the city's Chief Resilience Officer and under the leadership of Mayor Walsh, Dr. Martin supports all of Boston's major planning efforts, working across City departments and with external stakeholders. 100RC has worked to begin a citywide dialogue on the root causes of Boston's divisions and inequities, helping the city to unite and build collective capacity for change.   

The TAPL social equity lab was provided to the city by 100RC as part of its network of Platform Partners. Boston is one of only two cities worldwide, along with Athens, Greece, to be selected as a pilot site for the TAPL's work with 100RC. 100RC Platform Partners provide a suite of resilience-building tools and services supplied by partners from the private, public, academic, and non-profit sectors - at no cost to 100RC member cities.