Fall Term 2023 | Weekly Coffee & Transit Seminar

This weekly seminar focuses on topics related to transit and cities, and is designed as a salon where transit enthusiasts, geeks and scholars can gather to share knowledge, raise questions, test out ideas, and share ongoing research in a relaxed setting.  DUSP's Jim Aloisi hosts this informal gathering with no preconceived mission other than to spark and facilitate informative and interesting conversations, do a little MIT transit networking, and perhaps occasionally facilitate new collaborations.  You are encouraged to use these weekly meetings as a forum for an exchange of information regarding planned or ongoing research projects.  Feel free to attend and bounce ideas off the group. Attendees will always have the opportunity to bring topics to the table
 
The first meeting will be: Wednesday September 13 at 12:00pm – 1:00pm, Building 9 | Room 9-450A. 
We will meet every week thereafter.
 
Refreshments are not served. This is BYOC (Bring your own coffee, or lunch, tea, or whatever).
 
Seminar topics have included (and may include):

• Current Events.  What’s happening locally and at the federal/national level that is worth knowing about, understanding, discussing?  
• Post-pandemic effects on transit and cities.  Understanding the impacts of more remote work, locations where this is taking place, and how to leverage and respond to new journey needs and patterns.
• Are we getting transport sector decarbonization right?
• Transit fare policy - free bus, free transit, post-pandemic realities.
• Sustainable Mobility: does this term continue to have resonance & vitality, or is it a semantic chameleon that basically becomes whatever landscape it is residing in?  Can this term be reconsidered to instill new vitality to its underlying purpose as a commonly understood framework for policymaking?
• Calvino’s Invisible Cities: can this meditation on cities be a useful imaginative catalyst for a meaningful conversation about cities & planning?