The Small Cities Lab is a university research initiative building the civic capacity for small cities to navigate and envision urban change.

More than half of America's urban population lives in small cities, yet research, policy, and planning frameworks have historically focused on large metropolitan areas. As a result, small cities are often left to adapt tools and strategies built for places very different from their own.

This gap matters because the pressures facing cities today — worsening climate conditions, mass migration, rising income inequality, deteriorating infrastructure, and fragile ecosystems — are felt most acutely in small cities. In a large metro area, these shifts are absorbed across scale; in a small city, even modest change can have outsized and lasting impacts. Meeting these challenges means more than reacting to change as it happens — small cities need the tools to address change directly and the know-how to create it on their own terms, rather than relying on strategies borrowed from larger peers.

The Small Cities Lab exists to close this gap. Our mission is to develop civic capacity for navigating change in small cities, and our vision is to become a national leader in addressing the research and knowledge gaps these communities face. We focus on four areas where small cities are navigating the most change:

• Housing
• Economy
• Environment
• Culture

At our best, we collaborate with small cities at the intersections of these areas.

SCL mental model

Our Approach

We partner directly with city staff, non-profit leaders, and residents to co-create research projects and build effective design and policy responses to local challenges. Each partnership is a two-way exchange: as we help address a specific local issue, we also help small city leaders build the skills, knowledge, and capacity to navigate future change with confidence.

Since no city needs to face their challenges alone, we connect communities, practitioners, researchers, and policymakers through learning networks across regions. These networks let us share lessons learned across places, building a shared body of knowledge that establishes small cities as a vital category worthy of sustained study and investment.

Students are central to this work, bringing diverse research skills and perspectives to projects — and this exposure prepares students to be the next generation of civic leaders and professionals working in and for small cities.

Our goal is simple: close the small cities knowledge gap, and expand the civic capacity of small communities to shape their own futures.