Wall Street Journal reporter Paul Berger highlights Superpedestrian, an MIT startup and electric scooter company that secured $60 million in funding. Berger notes that Superpedestrian “spent more than four years designing a vehicle intelligence system that can diagnose and maintain itself.”
Prof. Ceasar McDowell speaks with Fast Company reporter Mark Wilson about the importance of designing for communities and not individuals in order to help create a more equitable future. "We're living in a system that really is unequal," says McDowell. "As long as we continue to design things so that they fit what's prominently on the market today, we're going to continue to support that inequality."
MIT researchers have unveiled a new autonomous modular boat, called the Roboat II, which that uses lidar, GPS and other sensors to navigate its surroundings, reports Kyro Mitchell for Popular Mechanics. The Roboat II “can attach itself to other Roboat II’s to form one large vessel, which is then controlled by a main ‘leader’ boat.”
Writing for the Financial Times, Prof. Carlo Ratti and Anna König Jerlmyr, the mayor of Stockholm, explore how to reduce demand on urban infrastructure and make cities more efficient. “Covid-19 has proved that changing routines is possible, so we can decide how our cities function,” they write. “Flattening the curve has been a painful response to a crisis but, in cities, it can be used as a strategy to bring greater wellbeing to our everyday lives.”
Writing for the Financial Times, research affiliate Ashley Nunes explores Vice President Joe Biden’s climate change policy. “If Americans are serious about addressing climate change, it’s time we accept a seldom-discussed truth,” writes Nunes. “Doing more for the planet starts with having less.”
Guardian reporter Rhi Storer spotlights how researchers from the MIT Senseable City Lab developed a self-driving and navigating robot that could be used to help clean up oil spills. “This technology was conceived to be deployed anywhere it was needed – in oceans, rivers, or seas,” explains Prof. Carlo Ratti. “We all need to be accountable for the environment. Some accidents are still bound to occur, so we still need to develop mitigation or cleaning strategies.”
In an article for The Conversation, graduate student Silvia Danielak delves into her new research exploring why disaster management models often need to be adjusted to better serve the needs of different communities. “Paying attention to the urban disaster managers’ understanding of place-based risk sheds light on the continuously compounding vulnerability and lack of sustainable disaster risk reduction in communities at risk,” Danielak writes.
Graduate student Kenyatta McLean speaks with Fast Company reporter Nate Berg about BlackSpace, a non-profit she co-founded that aims to bring communities of color into the urban planning decision-making process. “We know that heritage is such an important part of Black neighborhoods and is something that Black neighborhoods continue to produce and conserve themselves, so we did want to amplify that work,” says McLean.
Fast Company reporter Nate Berg spotlights Lecturer Karilyn Crockett and her new role as Chief of Equity for the City of Boston. “The idea that there is a person who is tasked with explicitly looking at these things is critical, but also, more than just a person or a single office, the idea that there’s a commitment to structural change,” says Crockett.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Carlo Ratti explores the importance of public spaces in bringing people together. “Public space is performing its primordial function: revealing fault lines in our society and helping to reconcile them,” writes Ratti. “This is a particularly important activity today, as the growth of digital communication is leading to increased polarization.”
Dean Hashim Sarkis speaks with Washington Post reporter Philip Kennicott about his new book, “The World as an Architectural Project” and the role of architecture in a post-pandemic world. “As architects, we are condemned to optimism,” says Sarkis. “Our field is necessarily about proposing and imaging new things, what the world could be through making a part of it better.”
Lecturer Karilyn Crockett speaks with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan of Boston Public Radio about how she plans to address equity in her role as Boston’s Chief Equity. "There's something we're not doing right to really showcase not only the city's richness and prosperity and wealth, and also just letting all of our people truly be in the city, integrated in the city, and just be around," she said.
Professor Emeritus Tunney Lee, an architect and urban planner who served as the chief of planning and design for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, has died at age 88, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. “At MIT, Mr. Lee was a mentor to scores of architects, teaching them to look beyond the creativity that went into designing buildings."
Karilyn Crockett, a lecturer at MIT, has been named to head Boston’s new equity and inclusion office, reports Erin Tiernan for The Boston Herald. “She will apply an equity lens to make sure everything our city government does is dismantling systemic racism and creating fair opportunity for all Bostonians,” said Boston Mayor Martin Walsh.
Boston Mayor Martin Walsh named Lecturer Karilyn Crockett, “a brilliant innovator and change maker,” as the head of Boston’s new Equity and Inclusion Cabinet, reports CBS Boston. “I need everyone standing here with me, and within the hearing of my voice, to be bold and move beyond what we may individually think is possible,” said Crockett.