Xavier Briggs

Xavier de Souza Briggs (born 1968) is a Bahamian-American sociologist and planner, known for his work on social capital and community building, as well as the concept of the "geography of opportunity," which centers on the consequences of race and class segregation for the well-being and life prospects of the disadvantaged. He is Associate Professor of Sociology and Urban Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is also a former faculty member of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He was a presidential appointee in the Clinton Administration, serving as a senior policy official at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

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. Raised by his mother, Briggs moved back to the U.S. in 1976, several years after The Bahamas secured independence from Britain. In 1985, he graduated valedictorian of his class at Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, a Catholic high school with deep roots in Cuba and the Cuban-American community in the U.S. He later received a BS in engineering from Stanford University, worked with the innovative planning firm of Moore Iacofano Goltsman, 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, garnering awards for academic achievement and public service, and studying under Robert Reich, Richard Zeckhauser, and other scholars and policy advocates. 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 influential scholars.

In New York City, Briggs helped develop the now 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 top award of the American Planning Association. He began his teaching career at Harvard, took a leave to work in the Clinton Administration from 1998 to 2000, returned to Harvard and, in 2005, moved to MIT. He is also a faculty affiliate of The Urban Institute, a leading nonpartisan policy research organization in Washington, DC.

Briggs' research centers on economic opportunity and inequality, racial and ethnic diversity, and democratic problem-solving in cities worldwide. His dissertation study, on the social networks of poor minority youth whose families were part of a housing desegregation program, was awarded by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. In 2002, he was appointed a Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Scholar at MIT. His last book, an edited volume called The Geography of Opportunity (Brookings, 2005), won the top book award in planning. He is the founder of two popular online resources for self-directed learning in the field of civic leadership and local problem-solving: The Community Problem-Solving Project @ MIT and Working Smarter in Community Development.

He has been an adviser to the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Bank, and other leading organizations and is a member of the Aspen Institute's Roundtable on Community Change. Briggs has served as an expert witness in civil rights cases, and he has lectured at Cambridge University, the University of Paris, and other top institutions of higher education. His views and research have appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Salon.com, National Public Radio, and other major media.

Key publications:

• 1996 - (With A. Miller and J. Shapiro) Planning for Community Building, American Institute of Certified Planners Casebook
• 1997 - (with E. Mueller and M. Sullivan) From Neighborhood to Community: Evidence on the Social Effects of Community Development (New York: Community Development Research Center, New School for Social Research).
• 1998 - "Brown Kids in White Suburbs: Housing Mobility and the Multiple Faces of Social Capital," Housing Policy Debate 9(1).
• 1999 - "In the Wake of Desegregation," Journal of the American Planning Association
• 2003 - "Community Building," The Encyclopedia of Community, edited by K. Christensen and D. Levinson (Sage Publications).
• 2004 - “Civilization in Color: The Multicultural City in Three Millennia”, City & Community 3
• 2005 - The Geography of Opportunity: Race and Housing Choice in Metropolitan America (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press)
• 2007 - “Some of My Best Friends Are: Interracial Friendship, Class, and Segregation in America. City & Community 6.
• 2008 - The Three-City Study of Moving to Opportunity, Policy Briefs (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, March).

References and external links

• http://dusp.mit.edu/p.lasso?t=5:1:0&detail=xbriggs
• http://sap.mit.edu/resources/portfolio/briggs/
• http://www.urban.org/projects/mto.cfm
• http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/friendship-1228.html
• http://www.npr.org/search.php?text=xavier+briggs
• http://web.mit.edu/workingsmarter/
• http://www.community-problem-solving.net/