Senseable City Lab

Rows of bikes are parked near a canal in beautiful Amsterdam.

Where do stolen bikes go?

An experiment in Amsterdam reveals how pilfered bicycles are put to use.

February 15, 2023

Superpedestrian says its vehicle intelligence system makes its scooters safer, more durable, and easier to maintain.

A more intelligent system for the scooter wars

MIT spinout Superpedestrian has developed a smart electric scooter to improve urban mobility.

August 22, 2019

Left to right: Richard Lester, MIT associate provost, who oversees MIT’s international activities; Sigbritt Karlsson, president of KTH; Anna König Jerlmyr, mayor of Stockholm; and Carlo Ratti, director of MIT Senseable City Lab.

MIT and KTH will collaborate on urban planning and development in Stockholm

Project will use new ways of collecting and analyzing data to make Stockholm more livable and sustainable.

May 16, 2019

Journal of Design and Science winning essays cover a range of disciplines and perspectives, from design and tech, to health and gender, to AI and morality.

Reveling in a complex, unknowable future

MIT Media Lab and MIT Press announce winners of the Journal of Design and Science essay competition.

July 23, 2018

Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Senseable City Lab have designed a fleet of autonomous boats that offer high maneuverability and precise control.

Fleet of autonomous boats could service some cities, reducing road traffic

Researchers design 3-D-printed, driverless boats that can provide transport and self-assemble into other floating structures.

May 23, 2018

Rear view of yellow taxi in city traffic

How many taxis does a city need?

New dispatching approach could cut the number of cars on the road while meeting rider demand.

May 23, 2018

"Strange Weather," appearing at the 2018 Seoul Biennale, focuses on artificial distinctions between interior and exterior.

Innovative MIT projects at the Seoul Biennale

Projects by School of Architecture and Planning faculty, researchers, and alumni explore the exhibition's theme of “Imminent Commons.”

October 26, 2017

Volunteers and rescuers work at a collapsed building at Colonia Roma, Mexico City.

Targeted, crowdsourced aid for Mexican earthquake victims

MIT team’s online platform links those who need aid with those who can help. (Este artículo está disponible en español.)

September 24, 2017

“If you work near someone, you’re more likely to have substantive conversations more frequently,” says doctoral student Matthew Claudel.

Proximity boosts collaboration on MIT campus

Study: Being near colleagues helps cross-disciplinary research on papers and patents.

July 9, 2017

“MIT World” is an online map showing the countries of origin of MIT students and scholars from 1999 to present. Blue lines represent undergraduates, red lines represent grad students, and gray lines represent visiting faculty and others.

Academics without borders

Senseable City Lab visualizes 20 years of data to show how students, faculty, and scholars join MIT from all over the world.

June 14, 2017

Researchers tracked tens of thousands of taxis in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, and Vienna and found that over 90 percent of rides that are more than 5 minutes in duration could be fairly easily shared.

Sharing the fares

Very different cities have similar potential for ride sharing, study finds.

March 6, 2017

Research from Senseable City Lab’s HubCab project on the potential for taxi sharing shows how more than 150 million taxi trips connect the city of New York in a given year. Yellow represents taxi pickups, while blue indicates drop-offs.

A future of shared mobility

MIT and Uber team up to study the potential for shared rides and vehicles to reshape urban mobility.

November 8, 2016

A study led by MIT researchers suggests that using mobile-phone data to track people’s movement provides a deeper picture of exposure to pollution in urban settings, compared to only studying air-quality levels in fixed places.

Measuring exposure to pollution

Mobile-phone data helps researchers study an urban problem in greater detail.

September 1, 2016

“The City of Tomorrow: Sensors, Networks, Hackers, and the Future of Urban Life” (Yale University Press), co-written by Carlo Ratti (pictured), director of the Senseable City Lab and a professor of the practice in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

Cities of tomorrow

New book by Senseable City Lab researchers presents vision of data-driven urban design.

July 5, 2016

Making cities smarter

MIT researchers are creating tools that synthesize and collect data so that urban planners can vastly improve the quality of urban life.

June 1, 2016

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