MIT researchers are using Legos to map out how changes in bus-rapid transit systems could affect transportation in Boston, writes Nina Godlewski for Boston.com. “Our ultimate objective is this idea of co-creation...We would like that to happen in how we produce 21st century transit systems,” explains Prof. Chris Zegras.
In a Financial Times article, John Aglionby writes about the impact of social media in Africa, highlighting how MIT researchers have developed a comprehensive map and application for Nairobi’s bus routes. The app allows users to “plot their way across the capital easily.”
MIT researchers have developed a website that displays information on how people use their cellphones in different neighborhoods and times, reports Kevin Hartnett for The Boston Globe. Prof. Carlo Ratti explains that the data says, “a lot about how we live and how our cities work.”
Prof. Carlo Ratti speaks with Catherine Lawson of Wired about the future of technologies and cities. “I think that we should focus more on design,” says Ratti. “Design is the best way not to predict the future, but to help create it.”
Bourree Lam reports for The Atlantic on an interactive map of U.S. counties produced using Prof. Amy Glasmeier’s Living Wage Calculator. “Glasmeier says that firms can use it to estimate how to pay their employees fairly,” writes Lam.
Ana Swanson reports for The Washington Post on an interactive map created by Prof. Amy Glasmeier that displays the gap between minimum wages and living wages across the U.S. The map shows that the East Coast “is one of the most challenging places for minimum-wage workers to make ends meet.”
Using their “Living Wage Calculator,” Prof. Amy Glasmeier’s team has created a map of the communities in the U.S. that have the widest gaps between living wages and minimum wages, reports Rob Wile for The Huffington Post.
Boston.com reporter Megan Turchi writes that MIT researchers have developed a map that compares the cost of living and minimum wage for households across the U.S. Prof. Amy Glasmeier explains that one of her goals for the map is to “to inspire policy makers to step up and ensure their wage scales were livable.”
In collaboration with Columbia University and the University of Nairobi, MIT researchers have created a map of Nairobi’s informal matatu (or mini-bus) transit system, writes Shara Ton for Wired. Ton explains that, “Just as New York commuters can plot their subway routes on the service, residents of Nairobi can now jack into the matatu system on their smartphones.”
CNN reporter Meera Senthilingam writes about LIVE Singapore, a project from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) that aims to use big data to improve urban living. "We can analyze the pulse of the city, moment to moment," says Professor Carlo Ratti director of MIT’s Senseable City Lab.
In a post for BetaBoston, Senior Lecturer Steven Spear urges the Boston 2024 committee to use videos and other representations to demonstrate what it would be like to host the Olympics: “Such simulations could help give people a sense of what something that occurs on the scale of the Games will look and feel like in practice.”
According to The Boston Herald, “Amsterdam’s Royal Philips N.V and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have signed a five-year, $25 million research alliance to develop healthtech solutions and digital connected lighting systems.” Philips will also move its North American research headquarters to Cambridge.
Stacey Higginbotham of Fortune writes about a new $25 million partnership between Philips and MIT in which the company will move its North American R&D headquarters to Cambridge: “Given that Philips will focus on lighting and healthcare technology for its R&D, Boston makes a considerable amount of sense, especially on the health side.”
Professor Carlo Ratti writes for the Financial Times about how data analysis can help architects design better buildings for the future. “If implemented correctly, analysis of occupancy and movement promises to revolutionise our built environment,” Ratti writes.
Professor Susan Silbey sheds light on the political ideologies that influence the debate surrounding parking-space savers in Boston in this article by Luke O’Neil of Boston.com. “In the act of placing a chair or other object in a shoveled out spot, a person is referencing Locke’s labor theory of property,” wrote Silbey in a paper on property law.