Anthony Vanky

Large-scale human mobility data can be collected from mobile phones, road surveillance cameras, and location-based applications while opportunistic methods are revealing movement patterns from the data exhaust of our everyday lives. Turning such raw data into knowledge can provide insights about how cities (and its citizens) operate. The goal of this class is to expose you to general methods that extract useful information from digital traces of human movement. It covers numerical methods to ascertain the structure inherent in daily activities within a population. Lectures are reinforced with case studies and exercises, using data sets from actual applications. At the same time, we will critique and analyze the limitations of such data-centric methodologies to foster a more productive—and human-centered—definition of mobility.

Broadly, we question in what ways are current techniques of understanding human mobility failing to address questions of access, equity, and even pleasurability/sanity for those who have to move across the urban landscape? In what ways can digital data reveal patterns that may assist us in understanding the lived experience of mobility, and how can we leverage this information? In what ways do we evaluate and/or utilize (near) future solutions such as autonomy and distributed/networked mobility in the context of human-centrism?

This course is not intended to be a transportation modeling class, but rather an application of data analysis, locative technology development, data visualization and communication, and interpretation by drawing from the context and challenges of urban mobility. It is for that reason this course addresses a multitude of contexts—from public transportation data from open data platforms to sensor-generated data on activities in a discrete location within the public realm. Through readings and discussions, we will contextualize the opportunities for future practice as well as the limitations of these quantitative processes. The course will question policy, and theorize new mechanisms for evaluating mobility, holistically.

With the proliferation of digital data, new opportunities are being availed to measure, understand and propose changes to the communities in which we live, work, and play. This has led to a host of new terms and disciplines—urban science, big data, smart cities, civic technologies—that seek to understand the intersection of digital technologies and the human environment. These forces have created new opportunities for planners to make data actionable through analysis and visualization, as well as avenues for new types of practice, including startups and data advocacy. Furthermore, many of the most urgent problems facing cities—including those as a result of climate change—are problems known, presently, through their representations in the output of predictive models. These forces and challenges have placed an imperative for planners to develop the facilities to collect, analyze, and communicate (visually and textually) using these large and often-messy data sets.

This Introduction to Urban Data and Informatics is intended to provide students an entrée into the technical, theoretical, and practice-based dimensions of data analysis in cities. The course is centered around technical lectures interspersed with guest presentations and class debates grouped into five topical categories—data acquisition, numerical analysis, spatialization, visualization and interaction, and civic technologies. Students will also have an opportunity to develop their project—based on their research question—that combines these technical aspects in a final analysis and visualization. Within the seminar and lecture sessions, we will discuss the policy and design questions around the creation of and use of urban data within the language of planning.

📸: Select work from 2019 can be found on the GSAPP website. 

This academic capstone is a chance to distill all the lessons learned during your time at GSAPP, all of one’s interests, and future ambitions into one assignment that, hopefully, will be rewarding, excite you every day, and serve as a launch pad for what’s next in your career! This workshop will be a way of moving you toward completing this milestone and guiding you through the process of academic writing and research. We will do this together in a workshop to find accountability, form a support community, and share lessons learned.

While we will discuss the difference, the MSUP program has two options for this milestone: the thesis and capstone. Both require you to independently scope a project, establish its bounds, and execute and document the work. The thesis is research, in nature–asking you to perform data collection, analysis, and write-up with the benefit that your interests guide the work. The capstone is similar in that it is an individual endeavor but requires an established relationship with a “client” whose needs your project responds to. In both cases, your advisor (me!) will simultaneously serve as a mentor and evaluator; he is your judge and advocate.

The minimum expectation at the end of this workshop is a comprehensive proposal that should serve as the foundation of your thesis. By creating this document, you will familiarize yourself with the process of academic research and writing, emphasizing formulating a research question, synthesizing literature, theory, and precedent, evaluating and generating empirical methods, and understanding ethical and policy issues related to social science research.

🖥️: My course’s thesis/capstone page may be found at https://urbandata.me/thesiscapstone/

Doctoral Colloquium I and III meet together and complement Doctoral Colloquium II in discussing various social science paradigms, with a particular emphasis on quantitative and computational methods. As the Ph.D. prepares students to conduct scholarly research, this course is foundational to your development as a scholar. This course aims to give students an overview of the research design process. 

The course uses examples of research debates from urban planning to illustrate different research strategies. Typically, the readings will include empirical studies accompanied by readings that explain the research strategy. Students can also propose alternative strategies for addressing research questions. Through practice, students will hone their research design skills. In the final part, students will present and critique each other’s research designs.

🖥️: Course website at https://urbandata.me/doctoralcolloquium

The proliferation of technologies has brought a concomitant wealth of spatiotemporal data. Within the context of this wealth of data, and the tools by which we can explore the data, this course seeks to introduce students to advanced techniques in creating, utilizing, and critiquing methodologies for addressing questions relevant to urbanism. Aimed at covering a variety of topics in both practice and in research, the course operates with a two-fold mission: (1) to critically discuss the theories, concepts, and research methods involved in spatial analysis and (2) to learn the techniques necessary for engaging those theories and deploying those methods. The class will work to meet this mission with a dedicated focus on the urban environment and the spatial particularities and relationships that arise from the urban context.

This course will draw upon various disciplines to interrogate the state-of-the-discussion of GIScience as well as extend it to the realm of “social physics” and network science (as a subset of topics from complexity science), as the volume and velocity extend our opportunity to extract useful information from digital traces of human activity. This course will, therefore, also extend to teach algorithms to model and characterize complex networks, as it is applied to questions of urbanism, planning, and design within the domain of physical space. However, with the nascency of these practices, this course situates itself in the uncomfortable middle of providing both the methods for answering complex socio-spatial questions and critiquing them within a professional practice discourse.

tl;dr: We will critically explore and discuss advanced methods in analyzing spatiotemporal data within urban contexts.

📸: Select student posters may be found on the GSAPP course description. 

After a natural disaster, the planning and prioritization of early recovery efforts were often difficult and could be misaligned with a community’s needs. Yet, planning had a unique role in building adaptation and resilience, especially in communities with high vulnerabilities, particularly in the initial stages of recovery. Many researchers and responders pointed to the emergence of digital data and computational tools to assist in discovering and prioritizing needs in these communities. Still, there was a lack of comprehensive investigation into how these tools might shape policy decisions.

Collaborating with the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center (NDPTC), the students proposed, tested, and validated emerging approaches to analyzing digital data, including satellite imagery, social media, and crowdsourced sources, to aid recovery prioritization. The project used the contemporaneous recovery planning efforts of government, non-profits, and community groups after Hurricane Ida as a case study to test and evaluate these technologies. Through interviews with residents, professionals, government officials, and advocates in St. Charles, Jefferson, and Lafourche Parishes, Louisiana, the students adopted a “Whole of Society” perspective on recovery planning and technology development.

The impacts of this project went beyond a single planning/technology evaluation for the NDPTC. The students brought urban planning values to machine learning (while learning these technologies themselves), and their outcomes can shape future disaster research through the breadth of results for various audiences.

📸: Students from the course produced a public-facing website, report and Github repository. 

🏅: The work was recognized with a 2022 Michigan Association of Planning (Michigan APA) Graduate Student Project award. 

Situated within the spatial practices of urban studies and city planning, this course provided a hands-on introduction to design principles, theory, software techniques, and strategies for communicating data to various audiences. Classes consisted of lectures, design workshops, and labs. Through readings, design critiques, and code assignments, students learned how visual representations can help in understanding complex data and in designing and evaluating visualizations for analysis or communication.

Topics included visual perception, exploratory data analysis, task analysis, graphic design, narrative, and more. The course not only introduced a suite of programs and skills, but also emphasized the significant role visual languages play in mediating interactions and shaping our awareness of the systems we are part of. It actively navigated the unequal agency afforded by (and limitations of) visual and narrative representations for different communities. The course explored how representation can serve as an act of advocacy or disenfranchisement. It examined the effects of inequities in indexical data collection as manifested in visual and narrative communication. Specifically, the course engaged with how representation—through the practice of describing existing conditions or proposing imagined possibilities—can transcend supposed neutrality, promote the inclusion of otherwise excluded communities, and counterbalance the biases inherent in the underlying data.

This course provided students with an introduction to the technical, theoretical, and practice-based dimensions of urban informatics, an interdisciplinary field of research and practice that uses data and information technology for the analysis, management, planning, inhabitation, and usability of cities. Situated at the intersection of digital technologies and human environments, this course positioned itself within the emerging disciplines of urban science, big data, smart cities, and civic technologies, among others.

The course was centered around technical lectures interspersed with guest presentations and class debates, grouped into five topical categories: data acquisition, numerical analysis, mapping and spatialization, visualization and interaction, and civic technologies. Students also had the opportunity to develop a project based on their research question, which combined these technical aspects in a final analysis and demonstration.

During the seminar and lecture sessions, we discussed policy and design questions related to the creation and use of urban data within the context of urbanism. These sessions covered topics related to the context and practice models associated with urban technologies, including civic technology, indicators, smart cities, and performance management.

The proliferation of technologies brought a concomitant wealth of spatiotemporal data. Within the context of this wealth of data and the tools available to explore it, this course aimed to introduce students to advanced techniques in creating, utilizing, and critiquing methodologies for addressing questions relevant to urbanism. The course covered a variety of topics in both practice and research and operated with a two-fold mission: (1) to critically discuss the theories, concepts, and research methods involved in spatial analysis, and (2) to teach the techniques necessary for engaging those theories and deploying those methods. The class focused on the urban environment and the spatial particularities and relationships that arise from the urban context.

The course drew upon various disciplines to interrogate the state of discussion in GIScience and extended it to the realm of “social physics” and network science (as a subset of topics from complexity science), as the volume and velocity of data extended our opportunity to extract useful information from digital traces of human activity. Therefore, the course also aimed to teach algorithms for modeling and characterizing complex networks, as applied to questions of urbanism, planning, and design within the domain of physical space. However, with the nascency of these practices, the course positioned itself in the challenging space of providing both the methods for answering complex socio-spatial questions and critiquing them within a professional practice discourse.

tl;dr: We critically explored and discussed advanced methods in analyzing spatiotemporal data within an urban context, with practice in common and exposure to emerging methods.

Students worked in entrepreneurial teams to advance innovative ideas, products, services, and firms oriented toward design and the built environment. Lectures, demonstrations, and presentations were supplemented by workshop time, during which teams interacted individually with instructors and industry mentors. Additional networking events and field trips were also provided. At the end of the term, teams pitched their ventures to outside investors, accelerators, companies, or cities for support. The course was instructed by Dennis Frenchman and Gilad Rosensweig.

🖥️ More information on designX can be found at https://designx.mit.edu.

In recent years, the practice of city design and development has become increasingly fractured and pluralized. The spatial practices traditionally associated with urban designers, city planners, architects, and real estate developers were also taken up by new entrants such as startups and technology companies. At the same time, these spatial practitioners responded and adapted to radical technological, social, and environmental changes by seizing opportunities and adopting new practices at the frontier of urbanism, including the development of new technologies and the creation of new mechanisms for participation. During this period of flux, questions arose about the limits of disciplinary promiscuity and the necessary models of collaboration, responsibility, and expertise.

The Urban Design Seminar was intended to interrogate pressing issues in contemporary urban design through the examination of the work of innovative, leading practitioners in the professions of urban design, architecture, planning, and landscape. Projects and topics discussed included the role of politics and agency in the advocacy of space, new models of development and ownership, emerging practices in the design of global cities, and design’s accommodation of global capital and investment, among other topics. Students were encouraged and required to propose agendas in the milieu of an evolving design practice that contributed to the discourse of the class.

Connected with the 2018 City Design and Development Forum, the series aimed to simultaneously focus on the outward gaze of architects, city planners, urban designers, real estate developers, and policymakers—expanding the purview of urban design practice—and the inward view of new entrants challenging the traditional methods by which cities are shaped. This series sought to stimulate debate by presenting viewpoints from those practicing on opposite sides of the periphery and questioning where the delineation between these practices existed. The lectures and panels of the Forum featured numerous public lectures by national and international practitioners, all of whom were prominent figures in the academic, public sector, and private sector realms of urban design. Each of these practitioners worked at multiple scales, and their presentations focused on the content and strategies of current work in their practice.

Houston, a large city in Texas, faced significant challenges during Hurricane Harvey in August 2017. The hurricane caused catastrophic flooding, resulting in the loss of over 100 lives and damage to thousands of homes. In response, many agencies, from the local to the federal level, have worked to develop an emergency warning system that sounds an alarm and utilizes data from weather sensors. Since its installation, this system has been tested a few times, but there remains uncertainty about its reliability and the proper protocol to follow when the alarm is sounded.

For example, leveraging existing local weather data, NASA precipitation data, and social media data to predict high-risk conditions could help. Then, creating ways to disseminate this information to the community would be essential. Using Houston as a case study, we can explore technologies that can be scaled to other contexts in the future.

This course introduced graduate students to theories about how cities are formed and the practice of urban design and development, using examples from the US and other countries. The course was organized into two parts:

Part 1 analyzed the forces that shape and change cities. Starting with Boston as a reference, we examined key forces affecting contemporary urban development: market economics, social forces, industrial production, the natural environment, public development, private development, and incentives to encourage good design. We also considered how cities define a vision for their future and how these are articulated in plans and proposals. Lectures were supplemented by guest presentations, case studies, and field trips.

Part 2 surveyed key models of physical form and social intervention that have been deployed to resolve the competing forces acting on cities. The models reflected distinct approaches to city-making. We discussed the evolution of each model, their practical consequences, and their potential for resolving emerging urban problems and opportunities. The models included Tradition, Art, Efficiency, Ecology, Security, Emotion, and Intelligence. The application of these models was illustrated through historical and contemporary project cases from Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the US.

The Digital Revolution is changing the way we live today as radically as the Industrial Revolution did almost two centuries ago. As urbanization accelerates across the world, digital media and information technologies hold huge potential for understanding, designing, and managing cities.

Over the last few years, the Senseable City Lab has aimed to anticipate the needs and opportunities that now exist in our cities as they incorporate these new technologies into the built environment as research insights and new design solutions. This seminar looks at issues faced in three sites that are made available to the class by sponsors. Students will conduct and present background research, identify relevant questions, develop project ideas, and evolve them into a detailed set of digital technology and design scenarios.

To capture the multi-disciplinary nature of such projects, students are challenged to draw on diverse fields for their proposals, such as city planning, architecture, engineering, computer science, and social science. Projects developed in the seminar will be personally evaluated and critiqued throughout the semester. The concepts discussed in the seminar will be evaluated and critiqued throughout the semester by fellow students, stakeholders, and guest experts. Co-instructed with Carlo Ratti.

📚: Guides summarizing the students’ work can be found at the Senseable City Lab. 

This hands-on project-based course explores the field of design for networked bodies in physical space. We will examine the ethical, aesthetic, and architectural challenges of actively engaging the dynamic information that defines our networked lives. We use design exercises to develop social interactions, communication devices, and sensory experiences that address critical issues in network culture and society. As groundwork for the projects, we will look at and discuss works of art that engage technology, networks, and performance for the purpose of collective action and urban activism. The ideological framing will draw from theories and practices in new media, cybernetics, information design, film, contemporary art, and fashion.

The course is multidisciplinary in nature, combining aspects of theory, art, and technology. Students from various disciplines and backgrounds, including but not limited to art practice, media studies, computer science, design, architecture, and engineering, are welcome. While students are not required to have any specialized technical experience, students will be expected to conceptualize, design, and test projects in real-world or virtual scenarios. It is understood that students may produce a range of projects, from simple small-scale experiments to large-scale public projects depending on their skills and interests. Collaboration and group work are encouraged. In addition to formal documentation of projects, students will be required to do periodic readings and participate in online forums.

In addition, students are expected to attend the ACT lectures on Monday nights at Bartos Theater. The lecture series is co-directed with Ute Meta Bauer, and Joan Jonas. Speakers include choreographers Xavier Le Roy and Constanza Macras, founder of “The Bread and Puppet Theater” Peter Schumann, video and performance artists Magda Fernandez and Catherine Sullivan, choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer, and philosopher Eva Meyer. Instructor: Amber Frid-Jimenez.

📸: Course photo gallery on Flickr.