DUSP/MIT: Innovating Adaptive Infrastructure

INNOVATING ADAPTIVE INFRASTRUCTURE > COMMUNICATION >

DESIGN > DISASTER MITIGATION FINANCE > > ECOLOGY > ENGINEERING > INDUSTRY > RENEWABLE ENERGY > > REVERSING DECLINE > SANITATION > TRANSPORTATION > WATER > >

> DEPARTMENT OF URBAN STUDIES AND PLANNING MIT

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.

INNOVATING ADAPTIVE INFRASTRUCTURE

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ROBOAT

The ‘roboat’ project — a research collaboration between MIT and the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS) — seeks to design and test the world’s first fleet of autonomous boats in the city of Amsterdam.

Each water-based unit can be used for transporting goods and people and for creating temporary floating infrastructures, such as self-assembling bridges and concert stages. Roboats can also monitor the city’s waters using new environmental sensors. Roboat’s findings will provide insights for many coastal cities; they will also contribute to the growing field of autonomous mobility, as it moves from roads to waterways.

Carlo Ratti, Daniela Rus, Andrew Whittle, and Dennis Frenchman

> WEST PHILADELPHIA LANDSCAPE PROJECT

The West Philadelphia Landscape Project has worked in Philadelphia’s Mill Creek Watershed since 1987. Throughout this history, students and researchers have worked with the people of the neighborhood to address opportunities and challenges posed by the urban landscape. A key proposal of the project is to manage the Mill Creek watershed as part of a broad approach to improving regional water quality and as a strategy to secure funds to rebuild the neighborhood. MIT students have explored new strategies for water management, created new visions for Mill Creek’s buried floodplain, and presented their ideas to the city.

Anne Whiston Spirn

DEPARTMENT OF URBAN STUDIES AND PLANNING MIT

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DEPLOYMENT OF EXPERIMENTAL MICROGRIDS FOR RURAL ELECTRIFICATION

This project in India and Tanzania is funded by the Tata Center for Technology and Design at MIT. We examine what factors influence choices to increase, decrease, or maintain levels of electricity use/demand, in order to enable better access to renewable energy for the approximately 1 billion people who lack access to modern energy sources.

David Hsu

> THE GLOBAL GOVERNANCE OF SANITATION

The promise of South-South Cooperation (SSC) as a powerful alternative development paradigm to the historically more hostile North-South development model is eliciting serious attention in scholarly research and in advocacy networks. SSC initiatives are also securing substantial financial support and leveraging the communication platforms of traditional international development institutions and development finance power brokers. This project examines SSC and other international cooperation typologies on the ground in the sanitation sector in the Mozambican capital, Maputo, to understand whether project-level evidence supports or contests the particular value of SSC. Attention is focused on how different international cooperation typologies map with different typologies of knowledge and learning, as well as how the density of cooperation actors is shaping the scope, quality, and accessibility of sanitation services for marginalized communities.

Gabriella Carolini

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STRATEGIES FOR URBAN STORMWATER WETLANDS: LOS ANGELES AND HOUSTON

Design Guidelines for Urban Stormwater Wetlands is an illustrative, conceptual guide of innovative forms for constructed wetlands and detention ponds that integrate hydrologic and ecologic function. This project was an interdisciplinary collaboration between urban designers and planners at the LCAU and environmental engineers at the Nepf Environmental Fluid Mechanics Lab. The aim of these guidelines is to inform decision makers, planning agencies, consulting engineers, landscape architects, and urban designers about the efficacy of using ecologically designed constructed wetlands and ponds to manage stormwater while creating new public realm.

Alan Berger and Heidi Nepf

INNOVATING ADAPTIVE INFRASTRUCTURE

DEPARTMENT OF URBAN STUDIES AND PLANNING MIT

> SHRINKING CITIES

Shrinking City research and studios explore the challenges of rebuilding once-thriving industrial cities characterized by abandonment, contamination, and decline. Taking mixed-use residential and industrial neighborhoods in the United States, Germany, Russia, China, Japan, and other countries, we investigate formal, programmatic, and socioeconomic conditions to generate design and policy solutions for owner, market, or public agencies.

Recent studios have included Buffalo, Baltimore, St. Louis, and the periphery of Mexico City.

Brent Ryan

Design: Mario Avila Design