DUSP in the Media: January 2025

Boston Globe, Legacy Fund for Boston charity redirects city development dollars to historic preservation.

Karilyn Crockett offers insights for Tiana Woodard’s on the use of The Legacy Fund for Boston’s support of a memorial honoring more than 130 elderly Black residents who lived at the Home for Aged Colored Women from the 1860s to 1940s. More…

MIT Industrial Liaison Program, Hacking Urban Planning.

Karilyn Crockett joins the MIT Industrial Liaison Program to discuss her research and applied work at the Institute and in the Greater Boston Area. More...

The Harvard Crimson, Biden Pledged Massive Grants for Massachusetts Projects. Trump Might Not Follow Through.

Jim Alosi is interviewed for an article in the Harvard Crimson focused on the hundreds of millions of dollars in federal transportation grants for Massachusetts that face uncertainty under President Donald Trump. More…

The Arts Fuse, Film Review: “The Damned” — Horror on Ice.

Ezra Glenn reviews Thordur Palsson’s The Damned, a “perfect little ice-cold January horror gem” blending historical horror, psychological horror, and folk horror “into a bleak midwinter’s tale to keep you up through the longest nights of the year.” More…

Planning Magazine, Tearing Up Over Teardowns and Gentrification.

Ezra Glenn reviews Monica Sorelle’s Mountains, a 2023 film focused on a Haitian immigrant’s grapling with his job of dismantling homes in his neighborhood in pursuit of his American Dream. Glenn notes, “planners will be interested in how the film examines gentrification and the dynamics of neighborhood change.” More… 

AARP Livable Communities, Getting From Here to There

Excerpts from Longevity Hubs: Regional Innovation for Global Aging (MIT Press, 2024), edited by Joseph Coughlin, offer a vision of mobility and transit systems could meet the needs of different subpopulations of older adults, extending mobility and accessibility for older adults who can no longer drive. More… 

Planetizen, How AI Is Revolutionizing Urban Forestry and Climate Resilience

Clement Lau’s Planetizen piece explores how Tree-D Fusion, an AI-driven tool developed by MIT and Purdue researchers, generates 3D models of urban trees to help city planners visualize future green spaces, address climate challenges, and enhance urban livability and sustainability. More…

Planning Magazine, Think Big, Plan Small: Lessons from Icelandic Cities for the U.S.

Jeff Levine considers how smaller U.S. cities, municipalities of between 25,000 and 150,000 people, could look abroad for lessons on how to navigate increasing populations with their mobility, housing, and sustainability goals. More…  

Fast Company, Designers are exploring the crushing, lasting impact of domicide

Diana Budds’ Fast Company piece cites efforts by Balakrishnan Rajagopal to classify domicide as a war crime, represented in Making Home, a new installation at the Smithsonian Design Triennial, grappling with the systematic destruction of homes. More…

Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, Understanding Mobility Gaps in U.S. Cities

Research by Andres Sevtsuk, Rounaq Basu, Dylan Halpern, Anne Hudson, Kloe Ng, and Jorrit de Jong is spotlighted on the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative for its use of big data to help city leaders better understand and address inequality in their cities. More…

World Resources Institute, Sustainable Cities Challenge: Varanasi Semi-Finalists

Prameya Consulting, an urban planning and strategy firm that aims to drive urban transformation through collaborative problem-solving and strategic planning, is named as a semi-finalist in WRI’s global challenge “to ​​make the crowded areas of Varanasi's old city of Kashi safer and more accessible for all.” The Prameya team includes three MIT alumni, Riddhi Shah (MCP ‘18), Ali Al-Sammarraie (MCP ‘19), and Karthikeyan Kuppu (MCP ‘19). More…  

Curiosity Unbounded, Making sense of cities

In the latest episode of Curiosity Unbounded, MIT President Sally Kornbluth speaks with Andres Sevtsuk to discuss the complex forces that shape our cities and the effects of urban planning on sustainable mobility and quality of life. More… 

Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture and the International Organization for Migration, Exhibit Charrette

Nandini Goel, Master of Architecture student, and Virginia Sun, Master in City Planning student, selected as participants in the 2025 Exhibit Charrette at the ACSA113 Annual Meeting. The exhibit asks ten student teams to design experiences that engage the public’s understanding of the need for humanitarian shelter to support the world’s most vulnerable people.  More…