Photo from UW Clean Energy Institute
To find colleges and universities, do a Web search of the phrase: your city AND research OR academic institutes.
To learn about the university, look for links to Research, Institutes, and Programs. Also look for a list of Colleges, Schools, or Departments to see what kind of research may take place there. Does the school have an Urban Studies department?
Note that when you go to the website for the institute, it may have a search option that allows you to search within its website. This is a chance to explore. You might:
Note that you may use Google Advanced Search to search for topics within your University or Research Institute. In the image below, I search within the website of the University of Texas at Austin for the keywords "poverty OR poor OR socioeconomic OR opportunity"
click on image to enlarge
Try a search in the library's College Source database. College Source includes non-U.S. universities, and the Advanced search allows you to search by city.
You can also use the U.S. Dept. of Education to see a comprehensive list of universities by state.
For international cities, you can also check the Universities Worldwide website.
When you locate the research institutions in your city, determine whether or not one of those institutions has an Urban Studies department.
You can use the college's web site to look for this information. Use the site's search box, or check the school's list of programs or research areas.
Example - the University of Washington Urban @ UW Program