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City Science Leadership Team

Kent Larson, Co-Director and Advisory BoardAlex 'Sandy' Pentland, Co-Director and Advisory BoardCesar A. Hidalgo, Co-Director and Advisory Board Ryan Chin, Managing DirectorJoi Ito, Advisory Board MemberNicholas Negroponte, Innovation Advisor

Affiliated Research Groups at the Media Lab

Changing Places: How new strategies for architectural design, mobility systems, and networked intelligence can enable dynamic, evolving places that respond to the complexities of life.Kent Larson

Human Dynamics: How social networks can influence our lives in business, health, and governance, as well as technology adoption and diffusion.Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland

Civic Media: How to create technical and social systems to allow communities to share, understand, and act on civic information.Ethan Zuckerman

Macro Connections: How to transform data into knowledge.Cesar A. Hidalgo

Responsive Environments: How sensor networks augment and mediate human experience, interaction, and perception.Joseph A. Paradiso

Social Computing: How to meaningfully connect people with information.Sepandar Kamvar

Viral Spaces: How to make scalable networks that merge the distant with the physically nearby.Andrew Lippman

For additional information, please contact:Ryan Chin, PhDManaging Director, City Science InitiativeMIT Media Lab 617.253.6828 (office)617.319.0778 (mobile)rchin@media.mit.edu

M I T M E D I A L A B

Why Cities?

The world is experiencing a period of extreme urbanization. In China alone, 300 million rural inhabitants will move to urban areas over the next 15 years. This will require building an infrastructure equivalent to the one housing the entire population of the United States in a matter of a few decades.

In the future, cities will account for nearly 90% of global population growth, 80% of wealth creation, and 60% of total energy consumption. Developing better strategies for the creation of new cities, is therefore, a global imperative.

Our need to improve our understanding of cities, however, is pressed not only by the social relevance of urban environments, but also by the availability of new strategies for city-scale interventions that are enabled by emerging technologies. Leveraging advances in data analysis, sensor technologies, and urban experiments, City Science will provide new insights into creating a data-driven approach to urban design and planning. Our future cities will desperately need such understanding.

Why the City Science Initiative at the MIT Media Lab?

The City Science Initiative at the MIT Media Lab is a unique network of research groups experienced in the design of technology and infrastructure, the analysis of big data, and the development of rigorous scientific theories. The City Science Initiative at the MIT Media Lab provides an interdisciplinary nexus where these research networks join to improve the design, livability and understanding of high performance urban environments.

We are seeking strategic partners from industry and government to develop targeted research projects and living lab deployments around the themes of urban design, mobility-on-demand, energy, big data, responsive technologies, and integrated live-work environments.

Our mission is to develop urban strategies that can result in:

100x Reduction in CO2 emissions10x Reduction in traffic congestion5x Improvement in livability 2x Improvement in creativity

http://cities.media.mit.edu http://cities.media.mit.edu

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CITY SCIENCE

Urban Analytics focuses on data-driven analyses of economic activity, urban perception, human behavior, mobility patterns, and resource consumption to inform the city design process.Parametric urban design tools and computer simulations will enable the creation of rapid prototyping platforms for the placement of mobility nodes, street typologies, and resource allocation.

Targeted interventions for existing cities and phasing strategies for the development of new cities will be generated in an evidence-based fashion, influenced by the findings of living laboratory experiments, and sophisticated data analysis. Projects include:

• Data-drivenanalysisofeconomic activity, human behavior, mobility patterns, resource consumption, etc. in order to inform evidence-based and experimentally validated processes for designing new cities

• Parametricurbandesigntools to schematically define mobility nodes, streets, building massing, and location of resources, to create nested compact urban cells (walkable neighborhoods)

• Urbanenergy,mobility,water,food, and waste simulator for efficient, post-oil cities

• Typologygenerationofstreetscapes, pathways, mobility nodes, and responsive technology for cities

In most cities, urban services are poorly distributed and require significant effort to maintain and upkeep. Projects in this theme will address the creation of new, network-centric methods for managing reactive urban systems. This includes the prototyping of persuasive interfaces that provide dynamic incentives for rebalancing of shared-use systems, and replacing the traditional one-size-fits-all urban service strategy with flexible options. These new models will be influenced by crowd-sourced intelligence and respond in real-time to the needs of urban residents. Urban-scale serious games can provide targeted incentives for city dwellers to alter their consumption patterns and shape use of resources such as shared-used mobility, variable-rate electricity, and flexible/time-shared workspaces. New portals for information dissemination through mobile applications and web-based interfaces will improve transparency in governance and accessibility of information. Projects include:

• Newnetwork-centricmethodsformanaging reactive, data-driven city systems

• Replaceone-size-fits-allsystemswith exchange networks in order to obtain more stable, fair, and socially efficient services

• Dynamicincentivesforre- balancing shared-use and interacting systems

• Urban-scaleseriousgamestoshape use of resources such as shared-used mobility, variable-rate power, and flexible workspaces

Modern trip planners have dramatically improved the multi-modal transit experience for millions of urban commuters, but they are often limited to a select few modes such as driving, walking, and public transit. Projects in this theme include the development of a sophisticated multi-modal mobility recommendation engine that ties together a variety of modes, from carpooling to bike sharing, and is influenced by real-time data such as weather patterns, traffic, and past user behavior. New urban vehicles including electric scooters, cars, and compact bike-lane vehicles are being designed and prototyped at the MIT Media Lab. Existing vehicle prototypes and vehicle-pedestrian interfaces for autonomous cars can offer a powerful platform for user-centric autonomous vehicle research. Improved public infrastructure for shared electric vehicles such as integrated charging and locking technology will reduce vehicle rental/drop-off time and dramatically improve user experience. Similarly, persuasive interfaces for shared-use vehicle systems can encourage mode-shift and positive mobility patterns for health. Projects include:

• Multi-modalmobility recommendation engines

• Newurbanvehiclesincludingelectric scooters, automobiles, bike-lane vehicles, etc.

• Autonomousvehicletechnologyand vehicle-pedestrian interfaces

• Chargingandlockingtechnologyfor shared-use vehicle systems

• Interfacesforshared-usevehiclesystems, including proactive, persuasive systems

The nature of work is changing dramatically with the ubiquity of mobile devices and Internet connectivity. The traditional office building is rapidly becoming obsolete as a place for personal work. Boundaries between home and the workplace are dissolving rapidly, spurred by advanced computation and synchronous and asynchronous communication. The design and prototyping of personalized, transformable urban housing will enable city dwellers to maximize the functionality of small apartments, thereby improving livability and convenience. Time-shifted, shared space-on-demand for collaborative work will allow for face to face meetings while giving businesses the opportunity to reduce their office space requirements and lower net energy consumption. The integration of modular, personalized hydroponic and aeroponic urban farming systems will give urban residents the opportunity to grow their own food and improve transparency of our incredibly complex food supply chain. Projects include:

• Personalized,transformableurban housing

• Time-shifted,sharedspace-on-demand for collaborative work

• Modular,personalized hydroponic and aeroponic urban farming

• Sensingandalgorithmsto understand fine-grained human activity for responsive lighting, HVAC, health, energy conservation, and communication in the home and workplace

Social networks enable the instant proliferation of ideas and events. Some have even contributed to sociopolitical movement and revolutions. Projects in this theme will explore electronic nervous systems, from the scale of the human body to the city. These decentralized electronic and social networks can form the basis for new patterns of learning, recreation, production, and health. They can provide pathways for people to communicate with their private and public worlds. To reach its full potential, an interlinked system of trust networks, that provide security through data encryption and biometric technologies, must be developed. These trust networks ensure privacy for otherwise invasive systems that make use of highly personal data such as mobility patterns, resource consumption (food, water, energy), and individualized health profiles. Projects include:

• Electronicnervoussystems,fromthe scale of the human body to the city

• Decentralized,contextualized,and social forms of communication to transform patterns of learning, recreation, production, and health

• Trustnetworkstoprovidesecurity and ensure privacy for otherwise invasive systems that make use of person activity data

New technologies for smart grids and intelligent metering can enable urban energy networks that dynamically respond to human mobility and behavior patterns. Today, networked demand response systems can reduce peak loading on our aging electric grids but the integration of renewable energy sources is still difficult due to intermittency. Projects in this theme will focus on the exploration of DC microgrids for compact urban cells that incorporate localized renewable energy generation sources such as rooftop photovoltaics and microturbines. These local DC power networks can reduce AC/DC conversion losses in residential buildings and provide direct connections between intermittent sources, loads, and battery-based energy storage. New technologies for energy storage will be investigated in depth, including business and service models for repurposing second-life automobile batteries for grid energy storage and buffering rapid charging of electric vehicles. Projects include:

• Dynamicsmartgridsthatrespond to human mobility and behavior patterns

• DCelectricitymicrogridsforpowering compact urban cells with renewable energy

• Second-lifeautomotivebatteries for energy buffering and vehicle rapid charging

• FullyDCpowernetworksfor residential buildings

City Science Methodology The current methods of city design date back to the 1800s, when engineers and city planners developed centralized networks to deliver drinking water, food, and energy. Similarly structured centralized networks were designed to facilitate transportation and remove waste.

These century-old solutions, however, are becoming increasingly obsolete. Modern cities designed around the private automobile, with single-function zoning, are becoming more congested, polluted, and unsafe. Citizens are spending more of their valuable time commuting, and communities are becoming increasingly detached. Many modern cities simply do not function properly.

Rather than separate systems by function - water, food, waste, transport, education, energy - we must consider them holistically. Instead of focusing only on access and distribution systems, our cities need dynamic, networked, self-regulating systems that take into account complex interactions. In short, to ensure a sustainable future society, we must deploy emerging technologies to create a nervous system for cities that supports the stability of their government, energy, mobility, work, and public health networks.

The Cellular CityCompact, diverse, walkable and attractive cities are a luxury, but they should not be. The City Science Initiative at the MIT Media Lab is exploring technologies to help develop cities that facilitate the creation of desirable urban features, such as shared electric vehicles, adaptable living environments, and flexible work spaces.

Our goal is to design urban cells that are compact enough to be walkable and foster casual interactions, without sacrificing connectivity to their larger urban surroundings. These cells must be sufficiently autonomous and provide resiliency, consistent functionality, and elegant urban design. Most importantly, the cellular city must be highly adaptable so it can respond dynamically to changes in the structure of its economic and social activities.

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Research ThemesCITY SCIENCE

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