Research for Redevelopment

For first-year doctoral student Anjali Adukia, spring break was no time to take a vacation. Instead of traveling to Puerto Rico or some other warm locale to relax, enjoy the sun, and forget about her lessons at the Ed School, Adukia volunteered to go to New Orleans and coordinate research for one of the neighborhoods most severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina. And, she says, she can’t think of a better way to have spent her break.

Adukia traveled to New Orleans with 18 other Harvard students as part of the Kennedy School of Government’s “Broadmoor Project: New Orleans Community Engagement Initiative,” an ongoing, multiyear research project that supports redevelopment efforts of the neighborhood’s proactive resident groups.

Following Hurricane Katrina, the local government designated Broadmoor as an area for future parkland. However, residents organized to save their neighborhood and began rebuilding in droves.  From March 25-31, the Adukia and the rest of the Harvard group helped Broadmoor’s cause by gathering data, measuring progress, and developing and implementing a redevelopment plan for the neighborhood. During the week, the students quantified Broadmoor’s rate of recovery and established benchmarks for future measurement at six-month intervals over the next several years.

At a March 29 meeting, the students outlined their methodology and preliminary findings — based on data gleaned from building permits, real estate transactions, national change-of-address data, census statistics, and comprehensive field survey data of every property in Broadmoor — for residents, who asked frequent and detailed questions, reflecting that lives and livelihoods depend on connecting the data with the health and progress of the neighborhood. Adukia coordinated the research information in a final report presented to the community at week’s end about post-Hurricane Katrina recovery rates. The neighborhood responded with much appreciation.

While Adukia admits that the trip didn’t directly focus on her research interests in international development and access to higher education, she says it did make a lasting impact on her own education.

“We sit in class and learn statistical modeling, research design, and theory,” she says. “But to be out there examining the data, designing an experiment that would be immediately put into effect, and then having the ability to see the resulting impact of the research on lives motivates and excites me.”

The trip not only offered an unparalleled educational experience for Adukia, but a personal one as well. She says the members of the group worked vigorously during the day often only getting a few hours of sleep a night.  “It was a precious opportunity to be able to work on a substantive project with students from other schools.  I learned a great deal just by observing the ways in which they approached and conceptualized the issues at hand.” Despite these long hours, the trip was fulfilling, and she relished staying in a Broadmoor family’s home where she heard firsthand from her host family’s daughter about education in the city and the relevance of their research.

“You can feel the energy there — despite the magnitude of destruction, there is so much beauty and life,” she says. “It’s been really inspiring.”

Kennedy School Senior Communications Officer Molly Lanzarotta contributed to this story