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Vital City | The World is Hard to Change

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We live in a revolutionary time of social data expansion, methodological innovation and active engagement between policymakers and researchers. As a result, we are better able to learn about social problems and the effects of policy than ever before. Yet this has left many dissatisfied: The promises of greater understanding, policy advancement and problem-solving associated with evidence-based policymaking have often felt unmet. Much of what we are learning is that large, lasting changes are rare — and not produced by small policy tweaks. Although there are important lessons to be learned from the limits of this revolution, we should resist the temptation to use it as an excuse to return to our theoretical or ideological assumptions. If we find that we cannot easily solve a social problem, that a policy solution with promise does not pan out or that successes cannot easily be scaled up or replicated, that does not mean that your prior preferred social arrangement will work better or th

Social science has its limits. We live in a revolutionary time of social data expansion, methodological innovation and active engagement between policymakers and researchers. As a result, we are better able to learn about social problems and the effects of policy than ever before. Yet this has left many dissatisfied: The promises of greater understanding, policy advancement and problem-solving associated with evidence-based policymaking have often felt unmet. Much of what we are learning is that large, lasting changes are rare — and not produced by small policy tweaks. Although there are impor

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