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Xavier de Souza Briggs (born 1968) is an American educator, social scientist, and policy expert, known for his work on economic opportunity, social capital, democratic governance, and leading social change. He has influenced housing and urban policy in the United States, contributing to the concept of the "geography of opportunity," which examines the consequences of housing segregation, by race or economic status, for the well-being and life prospects of children and families (see also residential segregation in the United States). He is a former member of the Harvard and MIT faculties, currently a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution. He is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
From 2005 to 2014, he was a professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).[1] He returned to the MIT faculty in 2011. In January 2014, he went on leave anew, to join the Ford Foundation as Vice President of Inclusive Economies and Markets — leading the foundation's economic opportunity work worldwide—and later, following a reorganization, its U.S. Programs. At the end of 2019, he left the foundation to begin a visiting appointment at New York University (NYU).
Professional life
In New York City, Briggs helped develop the widely emulated "quality-of-life" planning approach to neighborhood revitalization, and in 1996 his work with the Comprehensive Community Revitalization Program in the South Bronx won the President's Award of the American Planning Association. He began his teaching career at Harvard in 1996, took a leave to work in the Clinton Administration from 1998 to 2000, returned to Harvard and, in 2005, moved to MIT. He was also a faculty affiliate of The Urban Institute, a leading nonpartisan policy research organization in Washington, DC.
Briggs' research centers on economic opportunity, racial and ethnic diversity, and democratic problem-solving in cities worldwide. His teaching has included negotiation and collaborative problem solving; policy analysis; strategy and management, housing and economic development; the politics, history and ethics of planning and social change; and the uses of research in public policy making.
His earliest research, focused on the social networks of poor young people, examined the controversial desegregation of public housing following a landmark civil rights lawsuit in Yonkers, New York — later the subject of an HBO miniseries, Show Me a Hero. The widely cited study distinguished the role of social support and social leverage as distinct resources for economic mobility and status attainment — in plain terms, for "getting by" as opposed to "getting ahead."
In 2002, he was a Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Scholar at MIT. His edited book, The Geography of Opportunity (Brookings, 2005), analyzed the singular role of segregation as America has become more racially and ethnically diverse and at the same time more economically unequal. The book argued that significant responses to segregation remain rare and suspect in American politics and culture, also that these responses consist of either "curing" segregation (by changing housing patterns, i.e. changing where people live) or mitigating its substantial economic and social costs (by changing the links between place of residence and exposure to risks and resources, rather than changing housing patterns themselves). The edited volume also included the leading research on racial attitudes toward integration, racial discrimination in housingmarkets, links between smart growth in land use policy and housing affordability and segregation, and other key topics. The book won the top book award in planning in 2007 (the Paul Davidoff Award).
A second book, "Democracy as Problem Solving: Civic Capacity in Communities across the Globe" (MIT Press, 2009) offers an account of transformative change and the politics of reform in the U.S., Brazil, India and South Africa. The book, which was a finalist for the C. Wright Mills Prize, also offers an alternative theory of the functions and forms of democracy, focusing on local governance and grounded in core concepts of learning and bargaining, accountability, and stakeholder participation. Influenced by American educator and political philosopher John Dewey, this work argues that learning and bargaining are the twin capacities essential to collective problem-solving and shows the conditions under which it is possible to cultivate and advance both.
Briggs is the founder of two online tools for self-directed learning in the field of civic leadership and local problem-solving: The Community Problem-Solving Project @ MIT, sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and Working Smarter in Community Development, sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation.
In 2010, he and co-authors Susan Popkin and John Goering published "Moving to Opportunity: The Story of An American Experiment to Fight Ghetto Poverty" (Oxford University Press). The culmination of more than a decade of work on housing opportunity and the effects of high-risk neighborhoods on poor children and their families, and focused on "surprising" results of one of America's most ambitious housing experiments — a randomized control trial — the book won the Louis Brownlow award from the National Academy of Public Administration. "MTO" underscores the alarming impacts of a "quiet crisis" of unaffordable housing, particularly in America's most economically successful urban regions, where increases in housing prices, especially rents, substantially outstrip increases in wages, especially for low-wage workers and their families. The book also dispels myths about access to social capital, offering an argument about "the weakness of strong ties" — the cost of durable ties to risky relatives, in particular — echoing and extending sociologist Mark Granovetter's influential 1973 thesis on "the strength of weak ties." The book also questions dominant assumptions about individual choice and choice-driven social policy, directly responding to claims of behavioral economics, such as those in the book, Nudge, by renowned legal scholar Cass Sunstein and Nobel economist Richard Thaler.
This mixed-method research, with ethnographic, survey and administrative data on families and regions in the controversial MTO social experiment, complements the influential research of economists Raj Chetty, Lawrence Katz and others examining the decline and the drivers of economic mobility in America. As these and other scholars have shown conclusively, segregation and neighborhood effects play an important role.
Briggs has been an adviser to the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Bank, and was a member of the Aspen Institute's Roundtable on Community Change. He served as an expert witness for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in civil rights litigation. He serves on the boards of the Global Impact Investing Network, Just Capital, Demos, and the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences, and is a former trustee of Restaurant Opportunity Centers United (ROc-United), Citizens Housing and Planning Association, and The Community Builders (a nonprofit housing developer and manager).
His views and research have appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Salon.com, National Public Radio, and other major media. He has appeared on CNN and other broadcast news networks, explaining public policy and budget issues in both English and Spanish.[2]
Briggs is Bahamian-American and has identified himself as a mixed-race person of color. Born in Miami, Florida, Briggs spent the early part of his life in Nassau, Bahamas, where his family - with roots in the Black Seminole nation, Brazil, and Europe - has lived since the early 19th century. His mother, Angela (1933-2015), was the daughter of Bill Aranha, Nassau's crown lands officer during the 1940s, and his father, Nevin Briggs (1932-1978), was an out island doctor, born and raised in Nova Scotia, Canada.[4]
Raised by his mother, Briggs moved back to the U.S. in 1976, several years after The Bahamas secured independence from Britain. In Miami he attended Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, a Catholic high school with strong ties to Cuba and the Cuban-American community. He later received a BS in engineering from Stanford University, worked with the innovative planning firm of Moore Iacofano Goltsman in Berkeley, CA, and won a Rotary Scholarship to study education and community development in Brazil, living in Salvador, Bahia. In 1993 he earned a Master in Public Administration (MPA) from Harvard University. In 1996 he earned a PhD in sociology and education from Columbia University, where he studied under Robert Crain, Herbert Gans, Charles Kadushin, and other scholars. While a student at Stanford, Briggs designed and taught the second version of the Unseen America course, an approach in democratic experiential education, and joined with David Lempert and others to publish a book on this alternative approach to education.
Briggs, Xavier de Souza; Miller, Anita; Shapiro, John (Winter 2006). "Planning for Community Building: CCRP in the South Bronx". Planners' Casebook, American Institute of Certified Planners.
Briggs, Xavier de Souza; Mueller, Elizabeth J.; Sullivan, M. (1997). From Neighborhood to Community: Evidence on the Social Effects of Community Development. New York: Community Development Research Center, New School for Social Research.
Briggs, Xavier de Souza (2003). "Community Building". In Christensen, Karen; Levinson, David (eds.). Encyclopedia of Community: From the Village to the Virtual World. SAGE. ISBN0-7619-2598-8.
Briggs, Xavier de Souza (December 2004). "Civilization in Color: The Multicultural City in Three Millennia". City & Community. 3 (4): 311–342. doi:10.1111/j.1535-6841.2004.00091.x. S2CID227069996.
Briggs, Xavier de Souza; Turner, Margery Austin (March 2005). "Fairness in new New Orleans". The Three-City Study of Moving to Opportunity, Policy Briefs. Archived from the original on May 1, 2008.
Smart growth is an urban planning and transportation theory that concentrates growth in compact walkable urban centers to avoid sprawl. It also advocates compact, transit-oriented, walkable, bicycle-friendly land use, including neighborhood schools, complete streets, and mixed-use development with a range of housing choices. The term "smart growth" is particularly used in North America. In Europe and particularly the UK, the terms "compact city", "urban densification" or "urban intensification" have often been used to describe similar concepts, which have influenced government planning policies in the UK, the Netherlands and several other European countries.
A ghetto is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished than other areas of the city. Versions of such restricted areas have been found across the world, each with their own names, classifications, and groupings of people.
Henry Gabriel Cisneros is an American politician and businessman. He served as the mayor of San Antonio, Texas, from 1981 to 1989, the second Latino mayor of a major American city and the city's first since 1842. A Democrat, Cisneros served as the 10th Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the administration of President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997. As HUD Secretary, Cisneros was credited with initiating the revitalization of many public housing developments and with formulating policies that contributed to achieving the nation's highest ever rate of home ownership. In his role as the President's chief representative to the cities, Cisneros personally worked in more than two hundred cities spread over all fifty states. Cisneros's decision to leave the HUD position and not serve a second term was overshadowed by controversy involving payments to his former mistress.
The United Nations defines community development as "a process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems." It is a broad concept, applied to the practices of civic leaders, activists, involved citizens, and professionals to improve various aspects of communities, typically aiming to build stronger and more resilient local communities.
Racial steering refers to the practice in which real estate brokers guide prospective home buyers towards or away from certain neighborhoods based on their race. The term is used in the context of de facto residential segregation in the United States, and is often divided into two broad classes of conduct:
Advising customers to purchase homes in particular neighborhoods on the basis of race.
Failing, on the basis of race, to show, or to inform buyers of homes that meet their specifications.
Community economic development (CED) is a field of study that actively elicits community involvement when working with government, and private sectors to build strong communities, industries, and markets. It includes collaborative and participatory involvement of community dwellers in every area of development that affects their standard of living.
Ralph Wendell Conant (1926-2017) was a writer and researcher in the areas of social policy, metropolitan governance, and regional planning. Conant is also the former president of Shimer College and Unity College.
Homer Hoyt was an American economist known for his pioneering work in land use planning, zoning, and real estate economics. He conducted notable research on land economics and developed an influential approach to the analysis of neighborhoods and housing markets. His sector model of land use was influential in urban planning for several decades. His legacy is controversial today, due to his prominent role in the development and justification of racially segregated housing policy and redlining in American cities.
Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing (MTO) was a randomized social experiment sponsored by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the 1990s among 4600 low-income families with children living in high-poverty public housing projects.
Residential segregation is the physical separation of two or more groups into different neighborhoods—a form of segregation that "sorts population groups into various neighborhood contexts and shapes the living environment at the neighborhood level". While it has traditionally been associated with racial segregation, it generally refers to the separation of populations based on some criteria.
In the United States, housing segregation is the practice of denying African Americans and other minority groups equal access to housing through the process of misinformation, denial of realty and financing services, and racial steering. Housing policy in the United States has influenced housing segregation trends throughout history. Key legislation include the National Housing Act of 1934, the G.I. Bill, and the Fair Housing Act. Factors such as socioeconomic status, spatial assimilation, and immigration contribute to perpetuating housing segregation. The effects of housing segregation include relocation, unequal living standards, and poverty. However, there have been initiatives to combat housing segregation, such as the Section 8 housing program.
Urban sociology is the sociological study of social life and human interaction in metropolitan areas. It is a normative discipline of sociology seeking to study the structures, processes, changes and problems of an urban area and by doing so providing inputs for planning and policy making.
In the United States, subsidized housing is administered by federal, state and local agencies to provide subsidized rental assistance for low-income households. Public housing is priced much below the market rate, allowing people to live in more convenient locations rather than move away from the city in search of lower rents. In most federally-funded rental assistance programs, the tenants' monthly rent is set at 30% of their household income. Now increasingly provided in a variety of settings and formats, originally public housing in the U.S. consisted primarily of one or more concentrated blocks of low-rise and/or high-rise apartment buildings. These complexes are operated by state and local housing authorities which are authorized and funded by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In 2020, there were 1 million public housing units.
Housing discrimination in the United States refers to the historical and current barriers, policies, and biases that prevent equitable access to housing. Housing discrimination became more pronounced after the abolition of slavery in 1865, typically as part of Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation. The federal government didn't begin to take action against these laws until 1917, when the Supreme Court struck down ordinances prohibiting blacks from occupying or owning buildings in majority-white neighborhoods in Buchanan v. Warley. However, the federal government as well as local governments continued to be directly responsible for housing discrimination through redlining and race-restricted covenants until the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
Concentrated poverty concerns the spatial distribution of socio-economic deprivation, specifically focusing on the density of poor populations. Within the United States, common usage of the term concentrated poverty is observed in the fields of policy and scholarship referencing areas of "extreme" or "high-poverty." These are defined by the US census as areas where "40 percent of the tract population [lives] below the federal poverty threshold." A large body of literature argues that areas of concentrated poverty place additional burdens on poor families residing within them, burdens beyond what these families' individual circumstances would dictate. Research also indicates that areas of concentrated poverty can have effects beyond the neighborhood in question, affecting surrounding neighborhoods not classified as "high-poverty" and subsequently limiting their overall economic potential and social cohesion. Concentrated poverty is a global phenomenon, with prominent examples world-wide. Despite differing definitions, contributing factors, and overall effects, global concentrated poverty retains its central theme of spatial density. Multiple programs have attempted to ameliorate concentrated poverty and its effects within the United States, with varying degrees of progress and to sometimes detrimental effect.
Racial inequality in the United Statesof America identifies the social inequality and advantages and disparities that affect different races within the country. These can also be seen as a result of historic oppression, inequality of inheritance, or racism and prejudice, especially against minority groups.
The definition of mixed-income housing is broad and encompasses many types of dwellings and neighborhoods. Following Brophy and Smith, the following will discuss “non-organic” examples of mixed-income housing, meaning “a deliberate effort to construct and/or own a multifamily development that has the mixing of income groups as a fundamental part of its financial and operating plans” A new, constructed mixed-income housing development includes diverse types of housing units, such as apartments, town homes, and/or single-family homes for people with a range of income levels. Mixed-income housing may include housing that is priced based on the dominant housing market with only a few units priced for lower-income residents, or it may not include any market-rate units and be built exclusively for low- and moderate-income residents. Calculating Area Median Income (AMI) and pricing units at certain percentages of AMI most often determine the income mix of a mixed-income housing development. Mixed-income housing is one of two primary mechanisms to eliminate neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, combat residential segregation, and avoid the building of public housing that offers 100% of its housing units to those living in poverty. Mixed-income housing is built through federal-, state-, and local-level efforts and through a combination of public-private-non-profit partnerships.
Stefanie Deluca is a sociologist and the James Coleman Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. She co-wrote the book, Coming of Age in the Other America. Deluca received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University in 2002 and bachelor’s degrees in Psychology and Sociology at the University of Chicago.
Arthur C. Nelson is an American urban planner, researcher and academic. He is Professor of Urban Planning and Real Estate Development at the University of Arizona.
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America is a 2017 book by Richard Rothstein on the history of racial segregation in the United States. The book documents the history of state sponsored segregation stretching back to the late 1800s and exposes racially discriminatory policies put forward by most presidential administrations in that time, including liberal presidents like Franklin Roosevelt. The author argues that intractable segregation in America is the byproduct of explicit government policies at the local, state, and federal levels, also known as de jure segregation — and not happenstance, or de facto segregation. Among other discussions, the book provides a history of subsidized housing and discusses the phenomenons of white flight, blockbusting, and racial covenants, and their role in housing segregation. Rothstein wrote the book while serving as a research associate for the Economic Policy Institute, where he is now a Distinguished Fellow.
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