MetroBridge Fall 2020 Recap: Insight into Community Processes in Framingham to Help Inform the Mayor’s Racial Equity Initiative

By Claudia Chiappa

The COVID-19 pandemic and the continuous racial tensions in the country led several local governments to recently rethink their efforts towards equity and inclusion. The City of Framingham’s Racial Equity Initiative aims to advance the city’s efforts in equity and inclusion through educating residents, engaging the in community conversations, and implementing activities designed to help residents understand how they can take action on racial equity and antiracism. To support the program, the City of Framingham partnered with MetroBridge and students in BU Associate Professor Katherine Einstein’s Inequality and American Politics class during the Fall 2020 semester.

The MetroBridge program helps connect BU students, faculty, and staff to local governments in a series of exciting and ambitious projects. These projects not only provided students the unique opportunity to work on real-life, impactful projects with neighboring cities, but they also offered partner organizations the chance to learn from these research projects.

Racial equity is a priority for the city, explained Hannah Woit, Senior Advisor for External Affairs of the City of Framingham. Woit said the city is always working to ensure that all citizens have equitable access to the government.

“One of our biggest challenges has always been capacity and resources,” said Alaa Abusalah, Citizen Participation Officer of the City of Framingham. “This collaboration encouraged us to look at what we have and consider reallocating resources to improve accessibility and create meaningful pathways to participation in the City’s democratic process.”

“My hopes for the collaboration were to genuinely contribute to: racial equity in Framingham government and my students’ understanding of racial inequality and racism in local government,” said Einstein about the project.

Racial inequity manifests in different areas of government and public life. To better assist the City’s Initiative, students examined racial issues from a series of different lenses. For example, some students examined the diversity in the composition of city boards, commissions, and committees. A group of students focused on meetings of the zoning board of appeals, reviewing agendas, public documents, and the board’s approach to each meeting to identify racial inequities; Other students chose to examine issues with potential racial dimensions such as multi-housing development, while others examined the composition of the school board.

“The students were able to lend an outside perspective to the issue,” said Woit. “They presented very thoughtful solutions, such as to continue to give residents the option of viewing meetings on Zoom once in-person meetings resume, lowering some of the barriers to meeting participation and attendance.”

One group of students examined housing inequities in Framingham by analyzing the 2020 Apartment Moratorium Petition, which called for a 9-month suspension of the acceptance of applications for multi-unit housing projects. The goal was to assess whether the petition contributed to potential racial inequality in the city. Students collected and analyzed data on the petitioners, identifying their political affiliation, homeownership status, and age among other factors to predict race. The analysis found that supporters of the petition were mostly white, older homeowners with above average property value, and that the groups most likely to be affected by an apartment moratorium were underrepresented in the decision-making process. This resulted in legislation which negatively impacted younger, non-white, and lower-income residents.

All of the projects offered insights into the town’s inequities and allowed students to paint a picture of Framingham’s racial landscape; students offered suggestions for the city to improve its equity efforts and create a more inclusive environment for all of its citizens.

Abusalah said that the City is already working on how to implement students’ ideas into projects.

“We’re currently working on a Participation Guide that defines public meeting terminology and proceedings,” explained Abusalah. “We’re also collaborating with Technology Services to enhance accessibility by connecting the Boards and Commissions webpage to the meeting portal and creating a “one-stop shop.” Additionally, we’re excited to welcome Dr. Maritsa Barros, the City’s inaugural Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, who will help us dive deeper as we begin to evaluate our systems from an operational standpoint.”

“My students have learned so much!” explained Einstein as she reflected on the project. “They have a better understanding of how local government functions. Many have commented that they had no idea how easy it was to get involved, and that they plan to do so in their own communities. Framingham, I hope, benefited from receiving some methodologically sophisticated, careful analysis documented serious racial inequality in their planning processes and representative government.”

Learn more about other Fall 2020 MetroBridge projects here, and learn more about the MetroBridge program at bu.edu/ioc/metrobridge.