WHY MIT URBAN PLANNING
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THINK CITIES PLAN CITIES BUILD CITIES
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DESIGN EQUITABLE DEVELOPMENT
NETWORK SMARTER CITIES
SHAPE RESILIENT REGIONS
FOSTER INCLUSIVE COMMUNITIES
INNOVATE ADAPTIVE INFRASTRUCTURE
“THE WORLD COUNTS ON MIT TO HELP INVENT THE FUTURE.” President L. Rafael Reif
DEPARTMENT OF URBAN STUDIES AND PLANNING MIT
Over the past half-century, the world’s cities have experienced both decline and triumph. After decades of losing population and resources to suburban expansion, North American and European cities are again growing, reclaiming their role as centers of culture, innovation, influence, and commerce. As the 21st century unfolds, this trend is expected to continue, with over 100 million new urban residents in the U.S. alone; in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, even more profound metropolitan growth will occur, largely in areas lacking the infrastructure, resources, and organization to cope with rapid urbanization. Worldwide, cities will need to confront the effects of climate change, large-scale migration, shifting social and family structures, rapid technological development, and other powerful forces. Urban progress relies on a deep understanding of environmental and societal systems, and how design and planning interventions interact with them to shape cities. At MIT, planners analyze the built and natural environment and develop new technologies and development approaches, in order to design more resilient, equitable, and livable neighborhoods, cities, and regions.
Our mission is to educate students while advancing theory and practice in areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century. We are committed to generating and disseminating knowledge, and to working with communities, governments, and industry to bring this knowledge to bear on the world’s most pressing challenges. We provide our students with an education that combines rigorous academic study and the excitement of discovery with active engagement in the practice of place-making. Our goal is to apply advanced analysis and design to understand and solve pressing urban and environmental problems. To this end, the department fosters a culture of learning by doing, while also supporting the development of influential theories in the areas of urban planning and design, economic development, and environmental policymaking. By complementing more traditional seminars with studios, workshops, and practice, our faculty, students, and researchers are able to translate path-breaking ideas into practical and enduring solutions.
Through this process of translating ideas into action, MIT’s urban planning faculty, students, and researchers are having a profound impact on urban development worldwide. We are identifying the underlying trends, patterns, and systemic features of contemporary cities and their environments. And we are planning for the future in ways that will enhance the built environment while nurturing its supporting systems. Within this context, the theme that unifies urban planning at MIT is design. Through the design of physical spaces and forms, as well as of the policies and technologies that shape how those spaces are used, we aim to sustain and enhance the quality of the human environment at all scales, from the personal to the global. We believe that design—whether of physical space or of public policy—should be grounded in a commitment to improving individual human lives, enhancing equity and social justice, promoting cultural enrichment, and fostering the responsible use of resources through creative problem-solving.
NETWORK SMARTER CITIES
Since its founding 80 years ago, the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT has consistently been rated the premier planning school in the world. We are home to the largest urban planning faculty in the United States and enjoy the advantage of operating within the context of MIT’s culture of innovation and interdisciplinary knowledge creation.
PLAN CITIES
DESIGN EQUITABLE DEVELOPMENT
THINK CITIES
BUILD CITIES > SHAPE RESILIENT REGIONS
Beyond addressing climate change, there is a need to find wiser ways to use scarce resources, such as water, energy, and agricultural land, and to deploy more ecologically sensitive patterns of development in housing, commerce, industry, and infrastructure. The necessary transformations will require an evolution in governance at all levels, as well as purposeful engagement of the private sector to design and implement new planning models of the built environment.
> DESIGN EQUITABLE DEVELOPMENT
The world of the future depends on new development, but the lessons of the past have proven the inherent instability of development based on excessive resource extraction, cheap energy, and inequality. The task of this century will be to invent equitable models for development that improve the built and natural environments for all inhabitants of the planet.
> FOSTER INCLUSIVE COMMUNITIES
After years of decline in the United States and abroad, cities are experiencing renewal, driven in part by the private sector. At the same time, many low-income, minority, and migrant communities lack adequate housing, infrastructure, public services, and economic opportunities. To truly deliver on the promise of the city, we must take advantage of every opportunity to create vibrant, inclusive communities for all residents.
> NETWORK SMARTER CITIES
> INNOVATE ADAPTIVE INFRASTRUCTURE
Today’s cities and regions must adapt to change, whether social, environmental, or economic. Designing the infrastructure systems of the future will require new techniques and technologies. Importantly, new infrastructure systems must be rooted in an understanding and appreciation of the fundamental importance of resilience in the face of all types of risk.
FOSTER INCLUSIVE COMMUNITIES
SHAPE RESILIENT REGIONS
Cities represent crossroads, the nodes of interaction and communication for global networks of people, goods, money, places, and information. Emerging real-time data, spatially-aware applications, ubiquitous computing, new media, and digital visualization are changing the ways that cities function and how they are formed and designed. Our goal is to find ways to use innovative new technologies to build smarter, more efficient, and more livable cities.
INNOVATE ADAPTIVE INFRASTRUCTURE
Driven by an intellectual synergy among our faculty, students, alumni, and clients, and bolstered by the unique integration of design and development into a globally connected academic curriculum, we contribute to the development of cities around the world. Specifically, we work to:
DUSPMIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Building 7-337 Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139–4307 dusp.mit.edu
Design: Mario Avila Design