Urban studies and planning

Writing for The Boston Globe, MIT Prof. Carlo Ratti and Harvard Prof. Antoine Picon examine AI and the future of cities, noting that their research has shown “once trained, visual AI is shockingly accurate at predicting property values, crime rates, and even public health outcomes — just by analyzing photos.” They add: “Tireless, penetrating artificial eyes are coming to our streets, promising to show us things we have never seen before. They will be incredible tools to guide us — but only if we keep our own eyes open.”

MIT AgeLab Director Joseph Coughlin speaks with New York Times opinion columnist Farhad Manjoo about why the tech industry tends to ignore older people. “The market is aging,” says Coughlin. “The market is numerous. The market has got more money than the people they have been building products for.”

Prof. Carlo Ratti co-authors an article for The Boston Globe that examines the “power and pitfalls of condensing cities into small, specialized utopias,” like Barbie Land and Los Alamos. “To see diversity at work, we need look no further than Barbenheimer itself,” they write. “This accidental double feature turned our empty movie theaters into pop-up cities, tiny but diverse, with two tentpole films like adjacent storefronts on the street.” 

Prof. Jinhua Zhao writes for Boston Magazine about how artificial intelligence could help improve the MBTA system. “When something significant happens on public transportation—the line is down, the road is congested, some bridge is blocked—the customer is suddenly stuck in the system and needs more help,” writes Zhao. “For when that happens, we developed a solution to send individualized guidance for a better transit option to that person, communicated by text message or an app.”

Nature reporter Andrew Robinson spotlights “Atlas of the Senseable City” a new book co-authored by Prof. Carlo Ratti. The book is a “highly illustrated collection of digital maps,” Robinson notes, adding that it “analyzes four essential urban dimensions: motion, connection, circulation and experience.”

This past spring, Prof. J. Phillip Thompson and MIT lecturer Elisabeth Reynolds taught a class at MIT that sent students to work with local officials across the country to help identify available federal funds for climate change mitigation, reports Farah Stockman for The New York Times. “We have to figure out how to use it. Because if we don’t, wealthy communities will go green, and low-income communities will stay brown,” says Thompson. “Unless we do something intentionally to make sure that it is fair, it will bypass poor communities.”

Prof. Carlo Ratti writes for Financial Times about how new AI algorithms can impact the property market. “To train a real estate bot, our lab at MIT used pictures of 20,000 houses around Boston, as well as data that measured how their prices changed over time,” write Ratti. “When other variables were added — such as structural information and neighbourhood amenities — our algorithm was able to make very accurate predictions of how prices would change over time.”

Researchers from MIT have found that since the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a decrease in the number of interactions between people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, reports Danny Westneat for The Seattle Times. “It’s creating an urban fabric that is actually more brittle, in the sense that we are less exposed to other people,” says research scientist Esteban Moro. “We don’t get to know other people in the city … to know other people’s needs. If we don’t see them around the city, that will be impossible.”

Prof. Carlo Ratti writes for Nikkei Asia about the importance of world expositions. “We do not need expos to showcase products across the world, but we do need them as playful, experimental sandboxes for testing ideas and trialing concepts,” writes Ratti. “Putting the focus on innovation would not require wholesale reinvention, but instead a re-emphasis on an element that has been part of expos since the beginning.”

Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Carlo Ratti emphasizes that in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic “urban areas need to fundamentally reweave their fabric to thrive in the era of flexible work: That means ending homogeneous zoning, promoting mixed-use developments, converting some offices into housing, and giving more space to arts and culture. We should recognize that the fundamental attraction of urban areas is the pleasure they provide to their residents — and that the affordability of housing needs to be seriously tackled.”

On May 20^th, MIT students and community leaders gathered for “Hacking the Archive,” a hackathon aimed at addressing the wealth gap between Black and white residents of Boston, with a particular focus on housing as a generator of wealth, reports Kenneth Cooper for The Bay State Banner. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s no bigger challenge than the racial wealth gap,” explained Prof. Karilyn Crockett.

Popular Science reporter Andrew Paul spotlights “Ways of Seeing” a documentary project that aims to create “extended reality” (XR) experiences of significant architectural locales in Afghanistan as part of an effort to preserve the country’s historical sites. Paul notes that the project combines “cutting edge 3D imaging, drone photography, and virtual reality combined with painstakingly detailed hand drawings.”

Writing for The New York Times, Prof. Carlo Ratti and Harvard Prof. Edward Glaeser emphasize that in order to, “create a city vibrant enough to compete with the convenience of the internet, we need to end the era of single-use zoning and create mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhoods that bring libraries, offices, movie theaters, grocery stores, schools, parks, restaurants and bars closer together. We must reconfigure the city into an experience worth leaving the house for.”

Researchers from MIT have found that, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, people are less likely to explore economically different parts of their home cities, reports Immanual John Milton for Bloomberg. “Fewer people are visiting attractions like museums, restaurants or parks that are outside their immediate mobility radius, and they’re spending less time among residents at different socioeconomic levels,” writes Milton.

Prof. Carlo Ratti speaks with CNN reporter Paula Newton about the future of cities and the potential impact of vacant office spaces. “We need to meet in a physical space,” says Ratti. “Maybe not in the old office tower, but the physical space is very important. It’s the way we sustain and enrich our social networks.”