The Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) invites proposals for our Faculty Interactive Research Program (FIRP). University of Minnesota faculty are critical resources in exploring issues and concerns important to Minnesota, such as the criminal justice system, demography, state or local economic development, education, employment, energy, the environment, health, housing, state and local government, welfare and poverty, human and social services, transportation, or land use and development.

The FIRP encourages University faculty to carry out…

CURA is pleased to announce the recipients of this year′s Fesler-Lampert Chair in Urban and Regional Affairs and Faculty Interactive Research Program Award

Forrest Fleischman from the Department of Forest Resources is the 2021-2022 Fesler-Lampert Chair in Urban and Regional Affairs with this project, Urban Environmental Policy Advocacy: How Citizens Shape Cities’ Environmental Policy Agenda in the Twin Cities.

Additionally, three Faculty Interactive Research Program proposals were funded:

  • Samuel S. David (Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of…

We are again sharing a statement from CURA Director Ed Goetz on the murder of George Floyd at the top of this message. The fundamental issues of justice that Mr. Floyd’s murder surfaces for our community and for the entire nation dominate our conversations about what is next for CURA. 

Following that statement, we share a message about CURA’s work in a COVID-19 world.

Statement from the Director of CURA

Our community witnesses again the violence of police brutality ending in the death of a Black man. It is well past the time for people in power, those who can impose…

CURA is pleased to announce the recipients of this year′s Faculty Interactive Research Program grants: 

In the coming decades, Minnesota is poised to lose nearly 10,000 units of rental housing in the United States Department of Agriculture's Section 515 Program. This housing currently exists in nearly every county in Greater Minnesota, and comprises a substantial proportion of rental housing for very low-income households. In partnership with Minnesota Housing Partnership (MHP), a nonprofit organization based in St. Paul that supports the work of affordable housing and community development organizations, I propose a mixed-method research project focused on the Section 515 Program in Minnesota. Through analysis of secondary data maintained by USDA and primary data collected from interviews…

The Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) invites proposals for our Faculty Interactive Research Program (FIRP). University of Minnesota faculty are critical resources in exploring issues and concerns important to Minnesota, such as the criminal justice system, demography, state or local economic development, education, employment, energy, the environment, health, housing, state and local government, welfare and poverty, human and social services, transportation, or land use and development.

The FIRP encourages University faculty to carry out research projects that answer questions about these important regional issues, in partnership with community groups…

This project will rigorously evaluate the effects of Minnesota's School-Linked Mental Health program on academic outcomes, mental health services outcomes, and juvenile justice outcomes, for children and adolescents. This program has expanded progressively across Minneapolis, Hennepin County, and more recently the state, as a way to reduce barriers to identifying and treating mental health problems in school-age youth. We will take advantage of the staggered implementation of school-linked mental health services across schools between 2004-2016 to estimate difference-in-differences models that will isolate the causal effect of the program on the outcomes we have identified. We will use…

Over the past three decades, the number of women incarcerated in the United States has increased more than 600%. Today, nearly 219,000 women are incarcerated, approximately 6% of whom are pregnant upon their admission to prison. Children born to incarcerated women are known to be at increased risk for health problems. These children may be the most vulnerable in the nation, and yet they are among the least understood. Using a mixed-methods approach, this study seeks to characterize the health status and health care access of children born to incarcerated women, and to identify barriers to accessing care. Building on our partnerships with the Minnesota Prison Doula Project and the…

In recent years, policing has become an increasingly controversial and salient government service in the US. After several heavily publicized deaths of Black boys and men (and, later, Black women) during police encounters, some have rallied around the #BlackLivesMatter movement, while others have grown stauncher in their support for law enforcement. Yet scholars currently know little about this shift in the politics of policing. This study takes a mixed-methods approach, combining survey data, ethnographic observations, textual analysis, and qualitative interviews to understand police reform in Minneapolis, a city on the forefront of national progressive reforms, yet with a deeply…