A new report about migration, co-authored by MIT scholars, shows that economic distress is the main factor pushing migrants from Central America to the U.S. — and highlights the personal costs borne by people as they seek to move abroad.
The rising tide of urban data is transforming the field of urban planning. Studies utilizing cell phone data, social network service data, sensors, and satellite imageries have opened up new avenues of inquiry to quantify the built environment and model formerly hidden human mobility dimensions. Despite the myriad ways to synthesize this newly available information through the lens of city planning, the act of shaping cities remains a political gesture often legitimized through the use of data.
Two recent online events related to MIT’s ambitious new climate action plan highlighted several areas of progress, including uses of the campus as a real-life testbed for climate impact research, the creation of new planning bodies with opportunities for input from all parts of the MIT community, and a variety of moves toward reducing the Institute’s own carbon footprint in ways that may also provide a useful model for others.
When urban development takes place, a traffic impact assessment is often needed before a project is approved: What will happen to auto traffic if a new apartment building or business complex is constructed, or if a road is widened? On the other hand, new developments affect foot traffic as well — and yet few places study the effects of urban change on pedestrians.
In a normal academic year at MIT, the guidance and mentoring offered by faculty advisors to their graduate students is of paramount importance. This has only become more true during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, as the entire world was thrust into uncertainty.
Everyone knows the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. However, when you’re walking along city streets, a straight line may not be possible. How do you decide which way to go?
On October 8th, 2021, the Department of Urban Studies and Planning's Bish Sanyal was honored as the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning's (ACSP) 2021 Distinguished Educator.
Do the world’s nearly 1 billion urban poor, who subsist without legal housing, reliable water and sewer infrastructure, and predictable employment, lack political engagement as well?
Ying Gao does not buy the claim by many social scientists that social and economic marginalization necessarily means political marginalization.
Increasingly algorithmic processes are used by private and governmental actors to understand and craft interventions with the physical world. Through the lens of big data and data science, interventions are framed through an empirical lens, lending them an aura of impartiality and truth. Yet despite its empirical facade the world making of big data archiving is susceptible to a propensity to perpetuate systemic bias or singular perspectives of understanding the physical world it represents.
Urban form and mobility preferences
Urban planners and designers as well as city governance increasingly promote urban walkability as a means to tackle climate change, improve residents’ quality of life, and address socioeconomic inequities that auto-oriented development tends to exacerbate. In order to forecast the effects that envisioned changes to the built-environment could have on foot traffic, cities increasingly require quantitative, predictive pedestrian flow models.
Ending an eviction moratorium for renters makes people in a community significantly more likely to contract Covid-19, according to a new study co-authored by MIT researchers.
In 2010, the city of Rio de Janeiro opened its Operations Center, a high-tech command post centralizing the activities of 30 agencies. With its banks of monitors looming over rows of employees, the center brings flows of information to city leaders regarding crime, traffic, and emergency preparedness, among other things, to help officials anticipate and solve problems.
By many lights, these are challenging times: The worldwide Covid-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, rampant political polarization, and the social and economic effects of globalization have all contributed to a sense of unease or outright turmoil around the globe.
This summer, the Venice Biennale’s 17th International Architecture Exhibition, the world’s premier event of its kind, is directly tackling those types of issues, led by the exhibition’s curator, Hashim Sarkis, dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning.
Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, governments have used data on people’s movements to inform strategies for containing the spread of the virus. In Europe and the United States, for example, contact-tracing apps have used Bluetooth signals in smartphones to alert people when they’ve spent time near app users who have tested positive for Covid-19.
The rapid advancement of autonomous vehicles technology in recent years has changed transport systems and consumer habits globally. As countries worldwide see a surge in the use of autonomous vehicles, the rise of shared autonomous mobility on demand (AMoD) service is likely to be next on the cards. Public transit, a critical component of urban transportation, will inevitably be impacted by the upcoming influx of AMoD and the question remains unanswered on whether AMoD would coexist with or threaten the public transit system.
When disparate groups convene around a common goal, exciting things can happen.
The year 2020 was undoubtedly a challenge for everyone. The pandemic generated vast negative impacts on the world on a physical, psychological, and emotional level: mobility was restricted; socialization was limited; economic and industrial progress were put on hold. Many industries and small independent business have suffered, and academia and research have also experienced many difficulties. The education of future generations may have transitioned online, but it limited in-person learning experiences and social growth.
How does an individuals method of urban mobility impact their experience of a city and their perceptions of urban traffic? Moving in Nairobi, an exhibition that draws upon over 15 years of research, captures the city of Nairobi through the eyes of four commuters to explore this question.
Among the courses taught by Siqi Zheng is one identifying how real estate companies can be profitable while building and operating sustainably. Her class, 11.S949 (Sustainable Real Estate), at the MIT Center for Real Estate (CRE) attracts students from throughout the MIT School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) and MIT Sloan School of Management. Harvard University students also cross-register to attend her course.
What skills are critical to the success of a city planner? Creativity, design instincts, data science, fluency in economics, community engagement? Jeff Levine, Lecturer of Economic Development and Planning, believes you should include leadership and communication skills in your list of traits emblematic of effective urban planners.
Twelve MIT student affiliates have won fellowships for the Fulbright 2021-22 grant year. Their host country destinations include Brazil, Iceland, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Spain, and Taiwan, where they will conduct research, earn a graduate degree, or teach English.
Transport network companies (TNCs), or ride-sharing companies, have gained widespread popularity across much of the world, with more and more cities adopting the phenomenon. While ride-sharing has been credited with being more environmentally friendly than taxis and private vehicles, is that really the case today, or do they rather contribute to urban congestion?
Last year protests erupted in the U.S. and parts of South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, with the central message — Black Lives Matter. Ignited by the demonstrations for racial justice and police reform in the U.S., the protests around the world erupted in solidarity with the American cause, but took on the nuances of each context.
Dayna Cunningham, executive director of the Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) and a civil rights attorney who has devoted her career to promoting civic participation, building community partnerships, and advocating for underrepresented communities, has been named the Pierre and Pamela Omidyar Dean of Tuft University's Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life (Tisch College).