Neighborhood Services
Maintaining the Urban Commons
Residents are more responsive to neighborhood-based messaging of the 311 system.
My first collaboration in Boston was with the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics and the Office of Neighborhood Services to examine the use and effectiveness of the 311 system for reporting non-emergency issues. What resulted was an extended study of how Bostonians contribute to the maintenance of the public spaces and infrastructure of neighborhoods—that is, custodianship in the urban commons. Further, it illustrates the potential and limitations of civic technology in effecting collaborative relationships between public agencies and their constituencies. The work has included the in-depth analysis of novel administrative data, merger of “big” data with survey-derived “small” data, and public experiments in service delivery, making it a prime illustration of urban informatics methodologies and their potential for impact. The work was summarized in my book The Urban Commons (Harvard University Press; 2018), which received the American Political Science Association’s Dennis Judd Best Book Award for work on urban and local politics.
Publications (students in bold)
The Urban Commons. 2018. Harvard University Press
Winner of the Dennis Judd Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Urban & Local Politics Section.
O’Brien, D.T., Offenhuber, D., Baldwin-Philippi, J., Sands, M., & Gordon, E. 2017. Uncharted territoriality in coproduction: The motivations for 311 reporting. Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory, 27, 320-335.
Honorable Mention for the annual Beryl Radin Award for best article published in JPART.
O’Brien, D.T. 2016. Lamp lighters and sidewalk smoothers: How individual residents contribute to the maintenance of the urban commons. American Journal of Community Psychology, 58, 391-409.
O’Brien, D.T. 2016. Using Small Data to Interpret Big Data: 311 Reports as Individual Contributions to Informal Social Control in Urban Neighborhoods. Social Science Research, 59: 83-96.
O’Brien, D.T. 2016. 311 hotlines, territoriality, and the collaborative maintenance of the urban commons: Examining the intersection of a coproduction policy and evolved human behavior. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 10: 123-141.
O’Brien, D.T. 2015. Custodians and custodianship in urban neighborhoods: A methodology using reports of public issues received by a city’s 311 hotline. Environment & Behavior, 47: 304-327.
O’Brien, D.T., Gordon, E., Philippi-Baldwin, J. 2014. Caring about the community, counteracting disorder: 311 reports of public issues as expressions of territoriality. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 40: 320-330.
O’Brien, D.T. 2012. Managing the urban commons: The relative influence of individual and social incentives on the treatment of public space. Human Nature, 23: 467-489.
