Civic Analytics Program Annual Letter 2025

The Civic Analytics program continued its work using data and computation for social impact through applied and fundamental research. In addition to progressing projects supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, Klingenstein Philanthropies, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Land Economics Foundation, the program received new funding from the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, the New York City Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice, and Klingenstein Philanthropies. The program’s research this year put a renewed emphasis on using artificial intelligence to drive climate action, enabling community-led data analytics, and addressing issues of fairness and bias in algorithmic decision-making. Collaborators included the New York City Department of Buildings, the Guarini Center at the NYU School of Law, the Red Hook Initiative, the University of Pennsylvania, and the City University of New York (CUNY), among many others. Research Scientist and PhD Candidate Bartosz Bonczak and PhD Candidate Callie Clark are finishing their dissertations, and Director of Civic Analytics, Constantine Kontokosta, was promoted to full professor of urban science and planning. 

Data-driven climate action – research and impact. The Civic Analytics program’s longstanding work on bringing machine learning to climate policy continued to expand in 2025. New grants from Klingenstein Philanthropies and the NYC Department of Environmental Protection and the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice (through the Town and Gown Consortium) focus on building decarbonization through building performance standards and the phase-out of fossil fuels. Working in partnership with the NYU School of Law’s Guarini Center, and non-profit and industry collaborators, the Civic Analytics program co-organized a convening of city climate policy leaders from Boston, New York City, Washington, DC, Denver, and other cities to discuss recommendations for the future of building performance standards. The final report from this work will be released in early 2026. Kontokosta also continued his research collaboration with the NYC Department of Buildings to understand affordability issues around NYC’s Local Law 97 and its goal to reduce carbon emissions in buildings over 25,000 square feet.

The importance of community connectedness through neighborhood network analysis. Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (through the Sociology, HEGS, and HNDS-R programs), principal investigator Kontokosta and Lance Freeman from the University of Pennsylvania are using large-scale mobility data to demonstrate how community connectedness can be used to understand patterns of neighborhood change and create early-warning indicators of gentrification. Kontokosta and Freeman organized a special session on this topic at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning annual conference, featuring research from Kontokosta, Freeman, and PhD candidates Bartosz Bonczak and Callie Clark, as well as researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and other institutions. 

Driving change through community-led data analytics and partnerships. We completed our on-the-ground research with the Red Hook Initiative to enable community air quality and pollution monitoring and analytics in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Funded by a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and working together with researchers from CUNY, Kontokosta and the Civic Analytics team developed a new data pipeline to stream real-time data from a combination of high-quality air quality monitors and low-cost community-deployed sensors and to process and analyze these data through an interactive, accessible visualization platform. 

Commuting loss during COVID-19 and its aftermath. Supported by grants from the Land Economics Foundation and NYU CUSP, Kontokosta, Bonczak, and Marron Professor Solly Angel completed a study that examines changing commute patterns to employment centers across American cities. Using data from over 40 million devices over five years, the team identified the characteristics associated with the resilience of employment centers within cities, arguing that while the spatial structure of cities has changed, the city remains a critical locus of economic activity. The final paper will be released in early 2026. 

Improving the fairness of algorithmic decision-making in the public sector. Supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and Amazon Science, Professor Kontokosta and Research Fellow Boyeong Hong, together with PhD candidate Kate Boxer and Professor Daniel Neill, published their work on reporting bias in the Annals of Applied Statistics. The research, a result of a collaboration with NYC311 and NYC HPD, identifies reporting bias in complaints around heating and hot water problems in NYC’s multi-family buildings. Ongoing work by the Civic Analytics team is bringing together 311 data from 50 North American cities to make these data more accessible and to create generalizable bias-aware data tools for service delivery in cities.

Student mentorship and Civic Analytics researcher updates. Bartosz Bonczak and Callie Clark have had a productive year and will be defending their dissertations in the Urban Systems PhD program at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering in 2026. Bonczak was also an advisor for the New York Hall of Science “CityWorks” exhibit (and here), which opened in May. In the spring semester, we will welcome a new researcher through the university’s Sustainability Undergraduate Research Assistant initiative. Civic Analytics research affiliate and former PhD student of Kontokosta, Yuan Lai, has been promoted to associate professor at Tsinghua University. Former PhD student Sokratis Papadopoulos joined Meta as a senior data scientist. Professor Constantine Kontokosta, director of the Civic Analytics program, was promoted to full professor of urban science and planning. The Civic Analytics team was active in outreach and dissemination of its work, with talks and invited presentations at the ACSP Urban Planning AI workshop, Toronto Metropolitan University, NYU GIS Day, and the Land Economics Foundation, among others.