In recent years, interest in “public life”—people’s daily interactions within the built environment (Gehl 2011)—has been renewed as urban spaces are being transformed into areas for recreation, socializing and human activity. However, many of the commonly-accepted theories in environmental psychology and planning were generated from limited observations—limited by time and space. Especially salient in what would have been Kevin Lynch’s 100th birthday, this course will revisit these studies performed by Gehl, Whyte, Lynch, and others in enumerating human activities in public space by utilizing sensor and pervasive computing technologies that available to us today. This course asks in what ways can sensing technologies validate or challenge these theories of public space and social interaction, and how do we intersect them with aspects of environmental quality and justice, sustainability, equity and overall general well-being?

Participants in this hands-on workshop will design and implement prototypes for the creating of data on human activity, and environmental conditions and quality. Students will also learn methodologies to analyze and present the data. We will use the university context as a living laboratory to test and reevaluate the commonly-accepted theories of public life while engaging in critical conversations that balance the positive aspects of better-informed design and policy with the challenges concerning data ethics, surveillance, and privacy.

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 lead to a host of new terms and disciplines—urban science, big data, smart cities, civic technologies—that seeks 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, communicate (visually and textually) using these large and often-messy data sets.

This Introduction to Urban Data and Informatics is intended to provides 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.

In recent years, the practice of city design and development has become an increasingly fractured and pluralized. The spatial practices that are traditionally ascribed to giving form to the city—those nominally of urban designers, city planners, architects, and real estate developers—have also been taken up by new entrants—startups, technology companies, among others. At the same time, the spatial practitioners have responded and adapted to the radical technological, social, and environmental changes by seizing opportunities and adopting new practices at the frontier of urbanism including, reciprocally, the development of new technologies and the creation of new mechanisms for participation. In this time of flux, what are the limits of disciplinary promiscuity, and what are the necessary models of collaboration, responsibility, and expertise.

The Urban Design Seminar is 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 will include 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, design’s accommodation of global capital and investment among other topics. Students will be encouraged required to propose agendas in the milieu of an evolving design practice that contribute to the discourse of the class.

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

This subject introduces graduate students to theories about how cities are formed and the practice of urban design and development, using US and international example

The subject is organized into two parts: Part 1 analyses the Forces, which act to shape and to change cities. Starting with Boston as a reference, we will examine key forces affecting contemporary urban development such: market economics, social forces, industrial production, the natural environment, public development, private development, and incentives to encourage good design. Finally, we will consider how cities define a vision for their future and how these are articulated in plans and proposals. Lectures will be supplemented by guest presentations, case studies and field trips. Part 2 surveys key Models of physical form and social intervention that have been deployed to resolve competing forces acting on the city. The models reflect discrete languages of city making. We will discuss the evolution of each model, practical consequences, and potentials for resolving emerging urban problems and opportunities. The models include: Tradition, Art, Efficiency, Ecology, Security, Emotion and Intelligence. The application of the models will be illustrated in historic 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 solution.This seminar looks at issues faced in three sites that are make available to the class by sponsors. Students will conduct and present background research, identify relevant questions, develop project ideas, and evolve them to a detailed set of digital technology and design scenarios.In order 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.