In the past four years the MIT Center for Real Estate (MIT CRE), under the directorship of Professor Albert Siaz, has experienced impactful and positive growth. MIT CRE 2014-2018: Rising to New Heights, Cementing the Future, is a comprehensive overview of the continuing work and achievements of the staff and faculty of MIT CRE.
Climate change and increasing urbanization of populations are intensifying the impacts of stormwater flooding. Existing urban infrastructure often exacerbates the risks of flooding due to aging or inadequate systems for handling excess water as well as the replacement of natural ecosystems, that helped absorb flooding, with pavement and structures.
Adapted from the MIT News Story, here.
In recent decades, China has built and expanded its cities on a massive scale, giving rise to vast social, economic, and environmental changes.
Adapted from SA+P's MIT News Story, available here.
Dennis Frenchman, the Class of 1922 Professor of Urban Design and Planning, was been named the new faculty director of the MIT Center for Real Estate (CRE). He assumed the role on July 1.
To watch the entire series of videos of the lightning talks, click here.
On Wednesday, Nov. 8th, nearly two hundred DUSP alumni/ae, faculty, staff, and students gathered for an evening of sharing their work and ideas. DUSPx: MIT Connections was the fifth in a series of annual DUSPx events aimed at promoting connections both among alumni as well as between alumni and current faculty and students.
Cities have emerged as key centers for the development and deployment of new technologies and systems. They are concentrators of consumption, emissions, as well as innovation and change.
MIT has identified the Metropolitan Storage Warehouse as a potential new location for the School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P). The proposed move would let the Institute create a new hub for design research and education, allow the school to expand its full range of activities, and open new spaces for public use.
Please join us in congratulating Dr. Omar al-Razzaz (MCP ’87), who has been appointed Jordan’s new prime minister.
On June 5th 2018, Jordan’s King Abdullah II officially appointed Razzaz to form a new government after accepting the resignation of Hani Mulki, the former prime minister.
The 2017-2018 DUSP Thesis/Dissertation Abstracts booklet, providing a glimpse at the diverse set of challenges and phenomena studied, researched, and documented by MCP, SM, and PHD graduates, is now available for download via the link on the right and online viewing via issuu below.
Researchers from the City Scanner project at the Senseable City Lab are examining how environmental sensors embedded in vehicles could be leveraged to enhance information about our urban landscapes. By using sensors of vehicles navigating the city, they present a cost efficient, real-time ability to collect diverse data sets across cities.
At the Departmental Commencement Celebration on June 7, 2018, DUSP was pleased to welcome back Bomee Jung (MCP 2007) as our Commencement Speaker. Bomee is currently serving as the Vice President of Energy and Sustainability for the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), where she is coordinating the development of an Authority-wide comprehensive sustainability agenda.
In addition to hearing from Bomee, the following year-end awards were announced at the event:
Departmental Awards
The first China Venture Workshop cohort, ten MIT teams collaborating with local partners, will pilot solutions to urban challenges associated with urbanization.
Urban settlements and technology around the world are co-evolving as flows of population, finance, and politics are reshaping the very identity of cities and nations. Rapid and profound changes are driven by pervasive sensing, the growth and availability of continuous data streams, advanced analytics, interactive communications and social networks, and distributed intelligence. At MIT, urban planners and computer scientists are embracing these exciting new developments.
As a future with automated vehicles becomes increasingly crystallized, planners and transportation experts, are increasingly optimistic that these vehicles will create a shift in ownership versus sharing services for mobility models - unlocking opportunities to reduce congestion and pollution in urban environments.
On Thursday, May 17th, three exceptional staff members of the MIT community were honored with Infinite Mile Awards. The awards were presented at a celebratory event to DUSP’s Harriette Crawford as well as ACT’s Marion Cunningham and Media Lab’s Marissa Marcoux.
Part of the Institute-wide MIT Rewards and Recognition program, SA+P’s Infinite Mile Award is given to individuals–or teams–whose contributions are particularly valuable to advancing the School of Architecture and Planning's core mission of producing first-rate, innovative research, scholarship and teaching.
Anne Whiston Spirn, Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning, is one of the 10 honorees for the 2018 National Design Awards from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Spirn’s 30+ years of leadership, impact, and innovation were recognized with the honor of the Design Mind award.
Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) Professor Justin Steil has been awarded the 2018 Paul E. Gray Award for Public Service from MIT. The selection committee unanimously, and with great enthusiasm selected Steil as the first recipient of the Award, recognizing a member of the MIT faculty who exemplifies building “a better world” through teaching, research, advising, and service. Alison Hynd, Director of Programs at the PKG Center noted, “Justin’s commitment to community engagement runs deep.
We are now accepting applications for the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning "Excellence in Public Service Awards." Deadline: June 15, 2018.
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:
The Affordable Housing Development Competition, organized by the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston, annually brings together teams of graduate students in architecture, planning, finance, and policy with affordable-housing organizations to develop comprehensive proposals to address the needs of the organizations and local communities. Two interdisciplinary student teams received prizes for their projects that respect local interests and propose comprehensive design and development strategies.
Please join us in congratulating the many DUSP alumni who are involved in the summer of 2018 master planning of Sunnyside Yard.
Franknews, an online publication dedicated to the continuous examination of the institutions shaping our everyday experiences, is devoting the current May 2018 issue to urban planning.
Please join us in congratulating Gabriella Carolini, Susan Murcott, Justin Steil, and Jinhua Zhao, who have been awarded 2017-2018 Committed to Caring Awards. Carolini, Steil, and Zhao are DUSP faculty members, Murcott, a D-Lab faculty member, has taught and mentored many DUSP graduate students at MIT - all are valued members of the DUSP community.
Please join us in congratulating DUSP alumna Janelle Chan (MCP '07) on being named undersecretary for housing and community development for Massachusetts’s executive office of housing and economic development.
Chan succeeds another DUSP alumna Chrystal Kornegay (MCP '97). Kornegay is the director of MassHousing, for coverage of Kornegay's appointment read the DUSP News Story here.
Many urban areas in the United States remain highly segregated by race, limiting socio-economic mobility for a region's residents. In their new op-ed for the Bay State Banner, DUSP's Nicholas Kelly (doctoral candidate) and Justin Steil (Assistant Professor of Law and Urban Planning) delve into the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) implementation of the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule, which requires municipalities receiving HUD funding to engage their communities in order to reduce place based disparities in access to opportunity.
The proliferation of fitness tracking technologies - in our watches, bracelets, phones and other devices - has exploded, as people eagerly monitor and record their daily activities. The MIT Senseable City Lab, in collaboration with Liberty Mutual Insurance, have analyzed and anonymized this data to better understand activity patterns in cities, presenting their findings through CityWays. CityWays is an interactive data visualization project, that allows users to easily map modes of transportation, weather, routes, frequency, age, and gender to urban locations.
Please join us in congratulating doctoral candidates Elise Harrington and Daniel Gallagher, recipients of the 2018 Martin Family Society of Fellows for Sustainability.
The Martin Family Society of Fellows for Sustainability is a diverse community of MIT doctoral students, selected across the entire institute, who are pursuing sustainability research in a wide array of fields and topics.
Please join us in congratulating Benjamin Preis, a current MCP Candidate at DUSP, who was awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) 2018 Graduate Research Fellowship!
Balakrishnan Rajagopal, associate professor of law and development at MIT, has been elected as a counsellor to the American Society of International Law (ASIL). In this role, he will advise the advancement of international law scholarship and education in the United States and around the globe.
The Furthering Fair Housing project is a research program at DUSP gathering and analyzing the Assessments of Fair Housing from municipalities across the country created in response to the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule.
This portal is the most comprehensive source of Assessments of Fair Housing (AFHs) and provides important background information on the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule as well as the latest research on the Rule’s effects.
SPURS, created in 1967 within DUSP, is a one-year, non-degree program designed for outstanding mid-career professionals from newly industrializing countries. Over the course of 50 years, SPURS has drawn fellows from across over 120 countries and from fields as diverse as architecture, economics, and urban planning.
Please join us in congratulating Dr. Chris Jones, the newly named executive director of the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub.
As tuition expenses rise across the nation, graduates of the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning bear the burden of increasing student loans in order to make meaningful and lasting contributions to society through their chosen professions. The Excellence in Public Service Awards recognize outstanding public service achievements by DUSP graduates. These awards aim to encourage and inspire the pursuit of public service careers, providing a financial award of up to $10,000 to offset debt incurred by pursuing their graduate degree at MIT.
MIT CoLab has been building partnerships with the objective of identifying strategies to build equity into models of climate change mitigation and sustainable development in post-conflict Colombia. Partners includes the Ministerio de Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible (Colombian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Leibniz Universität Hannover.
The American Institute of Certified Planners has awarded a team of 16 graduate students from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) an AICP Student Project Award. The annual awards recognize outstanding class projects or papers that advance the field of planning. Winners will be recognized at the 2018 National Planning Convention in New Orleans.
Anne Whiston Spirn, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning, is exploring the interplay between the intangible - ideas and feelings - and the manifestation of physical form in her new multimedia website, Marnas: A Journey through Space, Time, and Ideas. Marnas is a garden in Sweden designed by Sven-Ingvar Andersson, a landscape architect who designed Amsterdam’s Museumplein and Vienna’s Karlsplatz.
On February 27, 2018 MIT launched a Task Force on the Work of the Future. The Institute-wide effort is aimed at understanding and sculpting the evolution of employment and work during an age of innovation.
Please join us in congratulating Professor J. Phillip Thompson, who has been appointed as Deputy Mayor for Strategic Policy Initiatives for New York City.
Speaking at the appointment, Mayor Bill de Blasio said, “Phillip is one of the foremost experts on how to better serve and lift up low-income neighborhoods, and has spent decades fighting in the trenches for progressive causes. He will make sure our agencies are working together to make New York City the fairest big city in the nation. As New Yorkers, we’re all very lucky he decided to come home."
What happens when we expand our definition of real estate - beyond the built environment and physical space - to include the human relationships forming and occurring within spaces?
[Note: updated 2/21/2018 to include memorial event details: see below.]
Martin Rein, professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning from 1970 until his retirement in 2011, died Oct. 15 of complications from Alzheimer's disease. Rein was 89.
MIT senior Yazmin Guzman, while completing dual bachelor degrees and the MCP program at DUSP, is deeply immersed in an array of community and education outreach programs.
Please join us for the opening of a new DUSP exhibit, This Garden is a Town, in the Keller Gallery, Room 7-408.
Please join us in congratulating Allison Albericci (MCP '12 and S.M. Arch '12) on being named a recipient of the The American Institute of Architects (AIA) 2018 Young Architects Award!
The Young Architects Award honors individuals who have been licensed 10 years (or fewer), who have demonstrated exceptional leadership, and made significant contributions to the architecture profession early in their careers. To read more about her accomplishments, visit the award announcement here.
Lawrence Bacow ’72, professor emeritus in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), has been named the next president of Harvard University.
We have an exciting array of lectures this semester, ranging on topics including pollution, immigration, transportation, sustainability, and more. For more information about these events, visit our events calendar.
Poster design by Sonny Oram
Speaking at MIT, prominent philosopher Cornel West advocated for greater examination and careful monitoring of the propensity to conform to dominant beliefs at institutions of higher education.
West’s talk, titled “Speaking Truth to Power! A Discussion on Institutional Provincialism,” warned of the dangers at leading universities to 'fetishize' intelligence rather than embracing humility for ones abilities. West was introduced by MIT Department of Architecture graduate student, Ty Austin, and concluded his talk with a panel of MIT faculty members including DUSP's Ceasar McDowell.
How did a shift in rental property ownership allow for the proliferation of the same tactics that caused the financial meltdown proceeding the Great Recession?
Projections: 14: New Uses for Old Rivers: Rediscovering Urban Waterways
MIT Press / Call for Papers
Editors: Andrea Beck and Isadora Cruxen
Dr. Patricia McCarney (DUSP PHD '87), president of CEO of World Council on City Data as well as the director of the Global Cities Institute at the University of Toronto, is championing open access to local data from cities across the world. The World Council on City Data showcases over 1.2 million combinations of data relationships, across 17 themes, and 100 indicators - helping cities to provide local answers to global questions.
How does the introduction of disruptive technologies and big data impact urban real estate markets?
What happens when the tactics of fact-checking and reason appear to be ineffectual at balancing the power, agendas, and stories of the elite and powerful?
During IAP 2018, DUSP Alumni Lawrence Barriner (MCP '14) and Grant Williams (MCP '17) lead a three day workshop aimed at linking the everyday innovation occurring across MIT with the limitless scope of speculative fiction.
David Hsu, Assistant Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning is the new chair of the Energy Minor Oversight Committee, responsible for shaping curriculum development and the creation of educational programs associated with the Energy Studies Minor.
The Energy Studies Minor, housed within the MIT Energy Initiative, is an interdisciplinary, undergraduate course of study that enables students from different schools and departments within MIT to explore energy issues across a wide range of fields.
Please join us in congratulating Chrystal Kornegay (MCP '97) who will become the first woman and the first person of color to lead MassHousing.
In Adrian Walker's Boston Globe piece, Kornegay says, 'I don’t think of myself as the typical kind of person to do this job, because I grew up black and poor, I pulled myself up by my bootstraps, but I had to make my boot and my straps. Even if you look at people of color in these roles, it’s not the black woman in dreads from Bed-Stuy.’
In an op-ed for The Globe Post, DUSP Professor Erica Caple James calls out President Trump for his recent insulting comments about Haiti, calling special attention to the history and context of disasters that have affected that country:
Trump’s Insults Pour Salt in Wounds of Haitians Healing After Succession of Disaster
At this year's United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP23), MIT community members from across the institute joined delegates from around the world to share ideas and strategies to accelerate progress toward the goal of a 2015 Paris Agreement.
"Records, by their nature, are not meant to be set annually. And yet that’s what is happening. The costliest year for natural disasters in the United States was 2017."
In a New York Times op-ed, Dr. Leah Stokes (PHD '15) names climate change as the underlying cause for increasing and intensifying natural disasters. Read her full piece, here.
Many people in California were saddened to learn that the state's recent wildfire devastation took the lives of firefighters defending Californians' lives, land, and homes. But what they might not have known — and what they may and found even more distressing — is that two of these firefighters were incarcerated people working in a prison labor program, earning no more than $2 an hour.