In a Wired article, Prof. Carlo Ratti writes about how responsive sensors can help reduce energy usage in buildings. Ratti explains that, “by pursuing a tailor-made, non-standardised approach we can achieve not only better comfort levels for building users, but also a substantial reduction in energy consumptions: between 25 per cent and 40 per cent.”
Bonnie Christian of Wired provides tips from experts for boosting productivity in the new year. A recent renovation by Prof. Carlo Ratti allows workers to adjust their lighting and temperature to “create a kind of thermal bubble, which follows each individual, allowing better comfort and a reduction of energy waste,” he explains.
Prof. Alan Berger writes for The Daily Beast about the findings of a new book he co-edited, Infinite Suburbia, which shows that “the vast majority of American economic and demographic growth continues to take place [in the suburbs].”
A team of MIT students and postdocs has taken the top prize in the architecture category of the 2017 Mars City Design competition, reports Janussa Delzo for Newsweek. Delzo notes that the MIT team’s tree-inspired concept features “domes or tree habitats...large enough for 50 people to live inside of them."
In a letter to The Financial Times, Prof. Jessika Trancik, postdoc Geoffrey Supran, and graduate student Marco Miotti clarify results from a study the lab released last year that compares emissions of gas and electric vehicles. “Not only do electric cars usually emit less than petrol ones already, but over time, as the carbon footprint of electricity continues to fall, that gap will widen,” the researchers explain.
In an article for The New York Times, graduate student Yonah Freemark writes that making city streets safer can help protect pedestrians and cyclists from careless and malicious drivers. “The side effects of a pedestrian-focused strategy are overwhelmingly positive, even setting aside the lowered potential for death. Air quality improves, people exercise more, neighborhood business expands.”
Researchers from MIT’s Urban Risk Lab piloted a free online tool that crowdsources social media posts to map flood conditions during Hurricane Irma, writes Frankie Schembri for NOVA Next. “Residents often have the best information about the situation near them,” explains research scientist Tomas Holderness, “and we now have the network to be able to collect information.”
Writing for The Boston Globe, MIT graduate student Matthew Claudel argues that innovation efforts should be focused on being more socially inclusive. “Municipalities that foster accessible innovation for livelihoods will reap the benefits of greater livability. It is those places, rather than techno-hubs that prize quick, marketable lifestyle amenities, that will emerge as the smartest cities of the future.”
By analyzing images from Google Street View, researchers from MIT’s Senseable City Lab have created a new database to calculate the total percentage of trees in a city, writes Matthew Reynolds for Wired. The database can potentially provide health data as cities with, “lower amounts of city greenery have been linked with higher stress levels,” explains Reynolds.
Prof. Alan Berger shares his ideas for creating suburbs that attract tech savvy and environmentally conscious millennials in The New York Times. “Millennial suburbanites want a new kind of landscape. They want breathing room but disdain the energy wastefulness, visual monotony and social conformity of postwar manufactured neighborhoods.”
Writing for the Associated Press about autonomous boats, Matt O’Brien spotlights Prof. Carlo Ratti’s work developing self-navigating vessels that will launch in Amsterdam next year. O’Brien notes that Ratti is, “also looking at ways small vessels could coordinate with each other in ‘swarms.’”
Prof. Lawrence Vale writes for Slate that proposed cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s funding could worsen the public housing crisis in the U.S. Vale writes that the American public housing system, “suffers from a toxic convergence of long-deferred maintenance, squeezed budgets and cost-cutting measures.”
Times Higher Ed reporter Matthew Reisz writes about a new study by MIT research that provides evidence that physical proximity helps drive collaboration. Reisz explains that the “research also confirms the importance of designing academic buildings to encourage cross-disciplinary research.”
Forbes reporter Kevin Murnane writes about how MIT researchers have used a computer vision system to examine how several American cities physically improved or deteriorated over time. Murnane writes that the study “provides important support for nuanced versions of traditional theories about why urban neighborhoods change over time.”
Prof. Eran Ben-Joseph visited the intersection where the BU Bridge meets Commonwealth Avenue in Boston with Gabrielle Emanuel of WGBH to discuss how to improve the area. In order to make the intersection safer for pedestrians and cyclists, Ben-Joseph recommended taking space away from cars, changing the intersection’s surface and adding design elements to make the space feel more urban.