DEPARTMENT OF URBAN STUDIES AND PLANNING
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Conflict and Neighboriless in Post-Genocide Rwanda Focuses on international development in the context of post-conflict and post-disaster rebuilding in Rwanda, at the juncture of neighborly interactions and national policy. Place: Rwanda Faculty: Delia Wendel
A New Model for the Urban-Rural Fringe Looks at new a form of urbanization that calls for a balance between 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 Santos Partners: Southeast University
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 standard, 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 MIT/UEM (MATI) Activating Transformative Initiatives in Water and Sanitation A project between a team of MIT and UEM planning and architecture students to the concepts of 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 Aims to create a vertically-integrated industrial agriculture operation, along with the necessary industrial, residential, and infrastructural components in an urban settlement of 30,000 people over 15 years. Place: Ghana Faculty: Alan Berger, Alexander D’Hooghe Partners: Africa Atlantic Franchise Farms 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
Edge Cities in China The study examines the effects of 110 industrial parks near eight cities in China, encomapsssing almost 10% of all industrial parks in the country. Place: Various cities in China Faculty: Siqi Zheng Future of Urban Mobility Explores the safety, comfort and time associated with transportation, getting individuals and goods 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: Chris Zegras, Joseph Ferreira, Carlo Ratti, and Jinhua Zhao Partners: Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Metro Manila: Safety, Security and Natural Disasters This project explores the replicable resettlement and upgrading strategies for informal settlers living along the lakeshore of Laguna de Bay in Muntinlupa City,the southernmost city of Metro Manila. Place: Manila, Philippines Faculty: Mary Anne Ocampo Partners: University of the Philippines; World Bank MIT-UTM Malaysia Sustainable Cities Partnership As part of the MIT-UTM Malaysia Sustainable Cities Program, each year students travel to UTM to study sustainable city development in Malaysia. Places: Johor, Kuala Lumpur, and Penang, Malaysia Faculty: Larry Susskind, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Gabriella Carolini, Phil Thompson, Miho Mazereeuw. Partners: Universiti of Techologi Malaysia; Malaysian Ministry of Education; and MIT’s MBA Asia
DEPARTMENT OF URBAN STUDIES AND PLANNING Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Re-Designing Disaster-Resilient Communities and Housing Developing strategies for linking local community housing development proposals with regional cultural and environmental landscape values while considering multiple environmental risks through community planning programs. Place: Saurashtra, India Faculty: Brent Ryan, Marie Law Adams, Lorena Bello Gomez Partners: Aga Khan Development Network Rethinking Bolpur and Shantineketan A new plan for historic preservation, sustainability and livability. Place: West Bengal, India Faculty: Bish Sanyal and Arindam Dutta Partners: Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur The End of Gated Communities and Urban Villages in China? Examines the past, present, and future of gated communities and urban villages in Chinese communities. These places are studied in the context of recent national directives proposing their elimination. Place: Shenzhen and other Chinese cities Faculty: Larry Vale and Brent Ryan Partners: Samuel Tak Lee Laboratory 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 >> CARIBBEAN
Climate, Calamity, and Cocoa This ethnographic project analyzes international agricultural development projects aimed at expanding the cacao value chain as part of post-disaster reconstruction efforts in Haiti. The project aims to offer alternative modes of intervention to improve the durability and efficacy of aid. Place: Haiti Faculty: Erica Caple James Empowering Women of Rural Haiti Toward Selfsufficiency Focuses on empowering women of rural Haiti toward self-sufficiency. It seeks 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
Application of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) to improve public transit operation Focusing on techniques to improve both rail and bus operations through operations planning and scheduling procedures as well as effective management and control “on the street.” Place: United Kingdom Faculty: Jinhua Zhao Coal Town Housing, Landscape, and Infrastructure The project looks at how to reclaim a highly degraded post-coal landscape for the future, and how to transition to a new energy paradigm. Place: Silesia Region, Poland Faculty: Rafi Segal, Marie Law Adams 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 Valuing Sustainability in the Artic: Analysis of discourse and practice in Iceland This project analyzes how Iceland institutionalized environmental financial mechanisms such as carbon markets. Place: Iceland Faculty: Janelle Knox-Hayes >> LATIN AMERICA
Assessing the Resilience of Urban Housing A team from the Resilient Cities Housing Initiative has been assessing the experience of residents living two newly-constructed low-income housing communities in Colombia. Place: Cartagena and Barranquilla, Colombia Faculty: Larry Vale Partners: Partners: Fundación Mario Santo Domingo; Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism 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, CoLab
INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS 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 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 Transit Oriented Development Proposing new design typologies, assessing social benefits and costs, working through financial models, and evaluating incentive structures available in local regulations for the viability of TOD. Place: Guadalajara, Mexico Faculty: Chris Zegras, Brent Ryan, Onesimo Flores >> MIDDLE EAST
Industrial Urbanism: A New Model For Retrofitting Israeli Cities Aims to develop new urban models to integrate manufacturing into the built environment. Places: Israel Faculty: Eran Ben-Joseph Partners: Tel-Aviv University Scenario Planning & Design of New Sustainable Neighborhood Forms Aims to develop sustainable typologies by understanding the contextual form and analyzing the quantitative urban metabolic flows at a household and neighborhood level for native housing. Place: Abu Dhabi Faculty: Alan Berger, Khaled Al Awadi Partners: Masdar Institute Underworlds: Tracking Public Health with Sewers Investigates the use of sewers as an “urban laboratory” on detecting disease in sewers. Places: Kuwait, USA Faculty: Carlo Ratti, Eric Alm >> GLOBAL/MULTI-REGION
A Multi-Country Regional Energy System Analysis Tool for Russia, China, and the US Aims to develop an energy analysis tool for Russia, China, and the US. Faculty: Amy Glasmeier Partners: Skoltech
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 Eminent Domains This comparative project examines the back-story and lasting legacy of iconic urban design interventions. Examples include, Haussmann’s Paris, the forced transition from Tenochtitlan to Mexico City, the invention of Shenzhen, China, and the”slum clearance” that led to Washington D.C.’s Federal Triangle, among other sites. Place: Worldwide Faculty: Larry Vale 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 Shrinking Cities Shrinking Cities research and studios explore the challenges of rebuilding once-thriving industrial cities characterized by abandonment, contamination, and decline. Places: China, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Russia, and the United States. Faculty: Brent Ryan Trends and Cycles in Regional and City 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 Using Gamification to Understand Energy Choices Using a game-based research approach to electricity service provision in rural communities, we are studying the value of electricity as a service and in competition with other products and the grid. Places: India & Tanzania Faculty: David Hsu Partners: MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design; TwoByThree; IIT; Bombay; Off-Grid Energy 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