Urban Portal catalogs seemingly every resource available online to urban scholars. The project’s main sections, emerging research and resources boast a large number of links with impressive search functions. Emerging research has two sections, “Issues” and “New & Noteworthy.” Issues are short scholarly examinations of socially relevant topics, like Does racial segregation hurt the poor?. New & Noteworthy collects news items related to urban issues. Resources organizes online resources into Data, including GIS data sets, Events, Journals, Links (to things like H-Urban, Historypin, and Hyper cities, and Organizations (108 listed when I visited). Those in the Chicago area may also be interested in the At UChicago section, which narrows the resources to those at the University of Chicago.

While Urban Portal’s greatest benefit for scholars is its comprehensiveness (so many links for me to click on), the feature I am most excited about is the project’s engagement in public issues. Collecting resources and news events is incredibly useful to academics, but the application of scholarly research on urban issues represents the kind of public outreach in which scholars ought to engage.