Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity

The Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity investigates the ways that laws, policies and practices affect development patterns in U.S. metropolitan regions, with a particular focus on the growing social and economic disparities within these areas.

Through top-level scholarship, mapping and advocacy, the Institute provides the resources that policymakers, planning officials and community organizations need to address reform in taxation, land use, housing, metropolitan governance and education.

Myron Orfield, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and one of the country's foremost authorities on metropolitan governance, directs the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, working with leading environmental and criminal justice law faculty.

• School Studies: Research on segregation by race and income in America's schools; fiscal stress in local school districts; performance of charter schools; relationships between school and neighborhood transition; and public policies to reduce racial and income disparities in school/student performance.
• Metro Area Studies: Studies of demographic, economic and policy trends in American metropolitan highlighting issues associated with uneven growth, segregation, the geography of opportunity, criminal justice, the environment and public finance.
• Housing and Planning Studies: Work investigating affordable and subsidized housing policy; regional governance; discriminatory mortgage lending practices; racial integration; and land use, environmental and transportation planning.
• Maps and Data: Maps, data and presentations with a wide variety of information on more than 50 American metropolitan areas, developed by IMO in the course of its research and outreach activities.  *New election maps and updated school maps are available.