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Mar 15, 2019. Posted by Takeo Kuwabara
By 2050, the United Nations estimates that 86% of the developed world’s population will live in urban areas. Currently, low wage, full-time employment fails to provide adequate income to affordably rent market-rate housing in almost any large American city, yet only one in four renters receives a housing subsidy. Further reinforcing structural challenges for the poor, more than a quarter of low-income American renters spend more than half of their household wages on housing costs.
Mar 13, 2019. Posted by Takeo Kuwabara
The Harold Horowitz (1951) Student Research Fund, established in 1999 through the generosity of alumnus Harold Horowitz (AR ’51), is awarded annually to one or more students - graduate or undergraduate - enrolled in a degree program in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P). The fund seeks to support: research assistantships and student-initiated research projects; extraordinary expenses of research for students working on advanced degrees; and costs of publication of research results that are of exceptional merit or importance.
Mar 08, 2019. Posted by Takeo Kuwabara
Less than a decade after the conclusion of the U.S. Civil War and the promise of the Reconstruction period, reactionary organizations led violent campaigns to entrench white supremacy and racial segregation. Explicit racial zoning ordinances and Jim Crow laws mandating segregation of public accommodations and excluding African Americans from educational and labor institutions worked in conjunction with mob violence to create an increasingly segregated urban landscape.
Mar 05, 2019. Posted by Takeo Kuwabara
On Saturday, Feb. 23, more than 100 middle school students gathered at MIT to compete in the annual Northeast Regional Middle School Science Bowl.
Mar 05, 2019. Posted by Ezra Haber Glenn
We are now accepting applications for the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning "Excellence in Public Service Awards." Deadline: May 1, 2019.
Purpose. In 1999, DUSP established the Fund for Excellence in Public Service to raise funds to assist and encourage graduates from the Master in City Planning (MCP) program who choose to pursue public service careers. The Excellence in Public Service Awards, as the Fund’s first initiative, is designed to advance three purposes:
Feb 28, 2019. Posted by Takeo Kuwabara
Eighty percent of Chinatown residents in Boston report housing insecurity - caused primarily by unaffordable rents. In addition, Chinese-American households living in Chinatown spending almost half their monthly income on rent each month.
Feb 28, 2019. Posted by Takeo Kuwabara
Yazmin Guzman, a master's student in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, has won the prestigious Gates Cambridge scholarship, which offers students an opportunity to pursue graduate study in the field of their choice at Cambridge University.
Feb 22, 2019. Posted by Takeo Kuwabara
Many locus points of innovation and growth in the United States are heavily regulated and controlled in regards to spatial expansion. As economic prosperity and high earning, highly skilled jobs increase in an urban area, so too do zoning regulations controlling types and levels of growth. These regulations are often associated with a sense by residents that an area has achieved a tipping point where the balance between density and accompanying amenities is in danger of producing urban congestion, with limited additional amenities.
Feb 21, 2019. Posted by Takeo Kuwabara
Reposted from David L. Chandler's MIT News Story, posted on February 15, 2019.
In one of the less-remembered passages of Martin Luther King Jr.’s celebrated “I have a dream” speech in 1963, he spoke eloquently about the large debt owed by this country to its black citizens after centuries of oppression — which he described as a bad check that was being returned from the bank of justice, marked “insufficient funds.”
Feb 20, 2019. Posted by Takeo Kuwabara
Reposted from School of Architecture and Planning's MIT News Story, available here.
Vibrant, innovative cities most often result from powerful collaborations among diverse constituencies.
Feb 15, 2019. Posted by Takeo Kuwabara
Led by two faculty members, a group graduate students and mid-career fellows from MIT’s Department of Urban Studies & Planning (DUSP) and the Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS) traveled to Buenos Aires for a week during IAP at the invitation of the Buenos Aires provincial government. Their objective: To conduct an in-depth study on how to integrate informal settlements into the formal urban fabric of Metropolitan Buenos Aires.
Feb 08, 2019. Posted by Takeo Kuwabara
Graduate students facing obstacles in their lives turn to their academic advisors more frequently than any other on-campus resource, according to the most recent MIT Enrolled Graduate Student Survey.
In addition to the expected scholarly advice, feedback on research, and letters of recommendation, many graduate students have expressed appreciation for their advisors’ support of their overall wellbeing, as related in numerous nominations for the Committed to Caring (C2C) Award.
Jan 25, 2019. Posted by Takeo Kuwabara
The landscapes beneath elevated highway viaducts conjure collective imaginings of danger, foreboding, and forgotten urban space. What if we could leverage clever programing, placemaking, and lighting to transform these overlooked spaces into active spaces for urban residents? Could thoughtful planning also mitigate some of the worse environmental impacts of highways?
Jan 22, 2019. Posted by Takeo Kuwabara
Reposted from Helen Knight's MIT News Story, posted on January 21, 2019.
For many years, China has been struggling to tackle high pollution levels that are crippling its major cities. Indeed, a recent study by researchers at Chinese Hong Kong University has found that air pollution in the country causes an average of 1.1 million premature deaths each year and costs its economy $38 billion.
Jan 11, 2019. Posted by Takeo Kuwabara
Lisa Peattie, a celebrated scholar and a lifelong activist who was Professor of Urban Anthropology in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and recipient of the ACSP Distinguished Educator Award, passed away on December 13th, 2018. She was 94.
She was born in Chicago, IL and raised in Illinois, Mexico, and Guatemala. Peattie’s international upbringing, surrounded by her parents’ fieldwork in Morelos and Yucatán, Mexico, nurtured an early interest in the connections across academic disciplines.
Jan 04, 2019. Posted by Takeo Kuwabara
We are experiencing unprecedented levels of displacement as conflict and crises fuel what is widely regarded as one of the worst humanitarian crises on record. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates 68.5 million individuals are forcibly displaced worldwide -- and nearly 60 percent of these individuals are seeking shelter in urban areas, not refugee camps.
Dec 28, 2018. Posted by Takeo Kuwabara
Can we redesign governance to improve public engagement processes - and can we expand our definition of a public to include an increasingly complex and diverse group of individuals and opinions? The Move, a podcast and collaborative learning platform, aims to gather people of all backgrounds seeking to facilitate real civic engagement to support cities, communities, and other institutions in creating the space needed to peacefully struggle and make meaningful progress in a democracy.