About the Initiative
Movement is remaking our communities.
Millions of people are on the move — across borders and within them, in cities from the Bay Area to Nairobi — and cities are where the resulting change lands first. This migration brings people together across different walks of life and origins – including racial, ethnic, tribal, religious, and social class. And those encounters shape social cohesion, the health of neighborhoods and schools, access to economic opportunity and local government, and people’s safety and wellbeing.
Handled poorly, it can deepen segregation and inequality along lines of race and ethnicity.
Handled well, it’s a source of shared prosperity.
The Flourishing Cities Initiative brings together researchers, city leaders, community partners, and policymakers to turn evidence — from both research and practice — into practical, scalable solutions. That work spans the questions that determine whether communities thrive as they change: how local governments innovate and remain accountable, how population change becomes a shared economic opportunity, how neighbors build trust across differences, and how cities adapt as a changing climate reshapes where and how people live and move. We work where the movement of people is felt first and shaped most: in cities.
– Our Premise
We see the movement of people not as a crisis to solve, but as a feature of modern life — one that calls for research-backed forward-looking management so newcomers and longtime residents can thrive together.
Because how communities respond shapes opportunity and prosperity along lines of race and ethnicity, this work sits at the heart of the Institute for Advancing Just Societies’ mission.
The Role of Local Government
Closest to the change — and first to act.
A mayor can’t set immigration law, but local governments answer for housing, schools, jobs, public safety, and whether and how a changing community holds together. Many cities are already leading — testing new policies and building programs — and would do even more with better evidence behind them.
We work alongside them so that evidence flows both ways: research sharpening what cities do, and the realities cities face shaping what researchers study. We learn as much from the places already getting it right as from the research itself — and our vantage lets us take the long view, building not only the solutions a community needs this year but the durable evidence that drives lasting change over the decades to come.
The Initiative in Practice
The Institute’s approach, applied to one urgent challenge.
Racial Equity in Neighborhoods Collaborative
Bay Area · 2026
Led by Stanford sociologist Jackelyn Hwang, uniting city officials, community leaders, and researchers across East Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Oakland to design and test practical responses to residential segregation—producing insights to scale.
Making Democracy Work in Welcoming Cities
National convening · 2026
With Welcoming America and Stanford’s d.school, we convened leaders from across the U.S. to co-develop ways to strengthen civic engagement, trust, and inclusive democracy in communities shaped by migration—producing fourteen concepts, several of which are moving forward.
What Can Become of Us?
National program · 2025-2026
So much attention goes to what divides us. What if we focused instead on what can bring us together? IAJS and Zócalo Public Square explored this question through a nationwide program inviting people to envision new perspectives on migration, America's changing communities, and the ways we connect across our differences.
Deliberative engagement in cities
Launching soon · U.S. & international
Scaling Deliberative Polling, with Stanford’s Deliberative Democracy Lab, a proven method that does the real work of democracy in diverse societies—convening a representative group of residents to learn the facts, weigh the evidence, and reach considered conclusions, helping cities make concrete, informed decisions on immigrant inclusion policies and programs.
– Building Outward
These dynamics echo in cities worldwide— and so does the search for what works. That’s why the Initiative’s mandate, like the Institute’s, reaches beyond the U.S.: we’re in active conversations with the Mayors Migration Council, a coalition of mayors leading on migration in cities worldwide, and we’re developing a convening with Stanford’s Center for Just Environmental Futures on climate migration and the built environment abroad — with more to come.
Collaborators
Partner with Us
Let’s build this together.
We’re working alongside funders, cities, researchers, and community partners who see the movement of people as one of the defining opportunities of our time.