DEPARTMENT OF URBAN STUDIES AND PLANNING
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Building 7-337 Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139–4307 dusp.mit.edu
INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS 2015 > AFRICA > ASIA > CARIBBEAN > EUROPE > LATIN
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DEPARTMENT OF URBAN STUDIES AND PLANNING
INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS >> AFRICA
Digital Matatus Standardizes open transit data for Nairobi’s Matatus — the informal and de facto city bus system. Building on past Kenyan-based digital mapping efforts and open source transit standards the project will result in a comprehensive framework for collecting, opening and mapping Matatu transportation data toward a mobile and equitable Nairobi. Place: Nairobi, Kenya Faculty: Sarah Williams Partners: Columbia University Center for Sustainable Urban Development, University of Nairobi: School of Computing and Informatics Negotiating Better Community Benefits in Natural Resource Development Contracts Provides guidance to governments and community stakeholders for securing community benefits from natural resource development in low-income countries; it evaluates the financial architecture, governance, and physical impacts of social funds set up in natural resource development contracts between the private sector and the Government of Mozambique. Place: Mozambique Faculty: Gabriella Carolini Partners: Centre for Habitat Studies and Development, University Eduardo Mondlane MIT/UEM Activating Transformative Initiatives in Water and Sanitation A project between a team of MIT and UEM planning and architecture students involving reflective planning, heuristic learning through field practices, and advocacy planning with youth partners around water and sanitation systems. Place: District of KaTembe, Maputo, Mozambique Faculty: Gabriella Carolini Partners: Bairro/Neighborhood Administrative district of Guachene in KaTembe, Guachene Youth Partners, UEM Faculty of Architecture and Physical Planning Model Agribusiness Cities in Africa: Ghana Redefines large-scale industrial agriculture in rural Ghana. The design challenge is to create a verticallyintegrated industrial agriculture operation, along with the necessary industrial, residential, and infrastructural components for an urban settlement of 30,000 people over 15 years. Overall, this project represents a new model for large-scale industrial agriculture in Africa, whose principles and components can be adapted for sites elsewhere. Place: Ghana Faculty: Alan Berger, Alexander D’Hooghe Partner: Africa Atlantic Franchise Farms
Digital City Design Workshop Cape Town: Technologies for Access and Mobility The project aims to create more efficient, responsive, and livable urban places and systems that combine physical form with digital media, sensing, and advanced communications. Place: Cape Town, South Africa Faculty: Dennis Frenchman, Carlo Ratti >> ASIA
Urban Displacement and Resettlement Data mapping and visualization to understand the impact of displacement on affected populations and enable and improve capacity. Place: Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai, India Faculty: Balakrishnan Rajagopal Partners: MISTI India Landscape & Urban Heritage Conservation Focus on cultural landscape heritage issues and projects in the Indo-Islamic realm. Landscape and urban heritage inquiry beyond monuments, combines conservation theory and practice with exploration of active urban environmental design projects. Places: India Faculty: Jim Wescoat Making the Clean Energy City in China/Low Carbon Urban Design Combining empirical evidence, design pedagogy and digital energy modeling to help accelerate the design and development of clean energy cities in China. Places: China Faculty: Dennis Frenchman, Chris Zegras Partners: Energy Foundation-China, Low Carbon Energy University Alliance, Tsinghua University MIT-UTM Malaysia Sustainable Cities Partnership As part of the MIT-UTM Malaysia Sustainable Cities Program, students travel to study sustainable city development in Malaysia. Places: Johor, Kuala Lumpur, and Penang, Malaysia Faculty: Larry Susskind, Balakrishnan Rajagopal Partners: Universiti of Techologi Malaysia (Johor), Malaysian Ministry of Education, multiple regional development agencies and the national planning association in Malaysia System Dynamics Model of Chinese Urban Housing Markets Development of a System Dynamics model of the urban housing market in typical Chinese cities. Place: China Faculty: David Geltner, Richard de Neufville
DEPARTMENT OF URBAN STUDIES AND PLANNING Massachusetts Institute of Technology
INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS High Speed Rail, Accessibility and Agglomeration How does high speed rail impact urban and regional growth in terms of economic agglomeration, land cover change and policy growth? To what extent, may capacity constraints influence the accessibility contribution by the high speed rail? This project aims to explore these questions using the high speed rail systems. Place: China, Spain Faculty: Jinhua Zhao Using Social Media and Crowdsourcing to Analyze the Chinese City Mines social media applications in China to identify land use and activity patterns that help to further understand the economic landscape of the city. The results will generate a data set about the value, land use, and dynamics of the city where previous data did not exist giving real estate investors the added information they need to understand the Chinese City Place: China Faculty: Sarah Williams A New Model for the Urban-rural Fringe Looks at new form of urbanization that balances the development of small cities, small towns, and new rural communities, with a focus on urban-rural coordination. This requires a new model for intensive, yet economical and environmentally sensitive, development in the urban-rural fringes, a challenge that demand, land use reform, community and housing design, and affordability. Place: Nanjing, China Faculty: Adele Naude Santos Partner: Southeast University (SEU) Future of Urban Mobility Explores the safety, comfort and time associated with transportation, getting individuals and good where they need to be, and when they need to be there. It also aims to reverse the alarming, unsustainable energy and environmental trends associated with transportation, Place: Singapore Faculty: Joseph Ferreira, Chris Zegras, Jinhua Zhao Partners: Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Creating a More Resilient Metropolitan Manila Explores urban resiliency strategies for Metropolitan Manila’s vulnerability to flooding. It investigates an ongoing metropolitan initiative, the “Eight Esteros” project, exploring resiliency strategies for selected urban waterways that frequently flood and their impact on adjacent communities. Place: Manila, Philippines Faculty: Mary Anne Ocampo Partners: University of the Philippines, World Bank
>> CARIBBEAN
ImagineSanturce A catalytic placemaking and revitalization effort to promote, support, influence, and consolidate sustainable, equitable and inclusive neighborhood revitalization initiative. Place: San Juan, Puerto Rico Faculty: Susan Silberberg, Karl Seidman Partner: Foundation for Puerto Rico New Designs and Management: Approaches for Hurricane Emergency Shelters Place: Haiti Faculty: J. Phillip Thompson Empowering Women of Rural Haiti Toward Selfsufficiency Focuses on empowering women of rural Haiti toward self-sufficiency, to improve access to jobs at fair trade wages, education, health care, and avenues for building sustainable community. . Place: Fond des Blancs, Haiti Faculty: Cherie Miot Abbanat Partners: Haiti Projects >> EUROPE
Urban Form as a Determinant of Urban Policy: Comparing Shrinking Cities in Germany and Russia Place: Bremershaven, Germany; Weimar, Germany; Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia Faculty: Brent Ryan Immigrant Locations and Native Residential Preferences A comprehensive study of the response of Spanish natives’ residence location decisions to immigrant arrivals, combining microdata on exact addresses with distance to amenities and socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhoods at baseline. Place: Spain Faculty: Albert Saiz Application of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) to improve public transit operation, planning and management Place: United Kingdom Faculty: Jinhua Zhao Valuing Sustainability in the Artic: Analysis of discourse and practice in Iceland The project analyzes how Iceland institutionalized environmental financial mechanisms such as carbon markets. Place: Iceland Faculty: Janelle Knox-Hayes
DEPARTMENT OF URBAN STUDIES AND PLANNING
INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS A Multi-Country Regional Energy System Analysis Tool for Russia, China, and the US Place: Russia Faculty: Amy Glasmeier >> LATIN AMERICA
Implementing Bus Reform: The Institutional Dimensions Analyze how reform proponents navigate tensions with, and address the concerns of, existing transport operators, and civil society, more generally, to produce more sustainable urban transport reforms. Places: Mexico City, Mexico; Santiago de Chile, Chile Faculty: Chris Zegras Partners: Catholic University of Chile Hydropower Conflicts in Southern Chile Implement new ways of engaging local stakeholders and representatives in indigenous groups in decisions about hydropower development in Patagonia. Places: Santiago, Valdivia, and numerous other locations in Chile Faculty: Larry Susskind Partners: Universidad Austral de Chile Flocksourcing: Mobile phone-sourced Intelligence for Sustainable Mobility Deploying smartphone-based technologies for improving mobility conditions for poor urban residents of the Global South. Places: Buenos Aires, Argentina; Mexico City, Mexico Faculty: Chris Zegras Partners: City of Buenos Aires, Grupo Prodi/UTL in Mexico City Community Innovation in the Colombian Pacific A multi-year engagement that included piloting the “Pacific Power” Community Innovation School. The program uses leadership development and innovation methodologies to support networks of leaders exploring economic development, political mobilization, and multi-sector collaboration on the subnational scale. Places: Colombia Faculty: Phil Thompson >> MIDDLE EAST
Industrial Urbanism: A New Model For Retrofitting Israeli Cities To develop new urban models to integrate manufacturing into the built environment. Places: Israel Faculty: Eran Ben-Joseph Partner: Tel-Aviv University
Underworlds: Tracking Public Health with Sewers To investigate the use of sewers as an “urban laboratory” on detecting disease in sewers. aside from the promising early studies from last year. Place: Kuwait, USA Faculty: Carlo Ratti, Eric Alm >> GLOBAL/MULTI-REGION
A Multi-Country Regional Energy System Analysis Tool for Russia, China, and the US Develop an energy analysis tool for Russia, China, and the US. Faculty: Amy Glasmeier Partner: Skoltech Comprehensive Initiative on Technology Evaluation Dedicated to developing methods for product evaluation in global development drawing upon diverse expertise to evaluate products using a 3-S methodology. Seeks to develop a deep understanding of what makes products successful in emerging markets. Faculty: Bish Sanyal Partners: USAID; Partners in Health, Oxfam; UNICEF Displacement Research and Action Network A global network to build new theory and evidence on the increasing incidence of mass displacement around the world. Faculty: Rajagopal Balakrishnan Partners: ESCR-Net, UN Experts on housing, food and internal displacement Trends and Cycles in Regional and Urban Growth Research project to explore factors of regional and economic growth. Place: Canada, Netherlands, UK, and US Faculty: Amy Glasmeier Partners: Cambridge University, Utrecht, and Queens, Canada Water Diplomacy A Global Research Coordination engaged in water security research and studies of water conflict to generate and sustain closer research ties and to develop a global on-line repository of water diplomacy cases. Faculty: Larry Susskind Partners: National Science Foundation, Tufts University