Policy Memo

Students will research and write a policy memo about any urban problem, its scale, causes, and a significant policy adopted or that could be adopted to resolve the problem for a city or metropolitan areas of their choice.

The memo should 1) be directed towards a particularly city or metropolitan area of your choice; 2) define the urban problem within the area of their choice and more broadly by discussing it’s background, scale, and by providing a set of causes that explain the existence of the problem; and 3) identify and describe at least one policy or initiative adopted (or that could be adopted) to resolve the problem, making clear the sectors and levels of government we would most expect to be responsible for addressing the problem. The problems may be related to general problems we cover in Modules 2 through 6 (e.g., crime) or parts of the general problems (e.g., recidivism by individuals on community supervision) or other problems that these modules do not directly address (e.g., urban climate change, home mortgage crisis, the homelessness of veterans, environmental injustice, police violence against civilians, traffic congestion, food deserts, problems exacerbating physical disabilities, etc.).