Planning Practice

PLANNING PLANNING PRACTICE PRACTICE

ISBN 9780692391877

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ISBN 9780692391877

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391877 9 780692

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“ Solving Problems, Together, for the Betterment of Humankind�

President L. Rafael Reif

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PLANNING PRACTICE Studios + Workshops 2005-2015 Production and Research: Eran Ben-Joseph, Sandra Elliott, Benjamin Gillies, Ezra Haber Glenn, Stephen Kennedy, Elizabeth Kuwada

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Special thanks to: Mario Avila, Hana Pegrimkova, and the students and faculty of MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Copyright © 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Urban Studies and Planning SA+P Press All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, unless specifically permitted in the text or by written permission from the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-692-39187-7

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Dedicated to the Students and Alumni/ae of MIT’s Course 11 Department of Urban Studies + Planning

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Con tents

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Massachusetts Studios & Workshops

Global Studios & Workshops

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Community Growth and Land-Use Planning Historic Preservation, Design, & Development Adapting to Climate Change MIT@Lawrence Revitalizing Boston Main Streets Boston Green-House Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative Rethinking Boston’s Biking Streets Boston Seaport Innovation District Cambridge Energy Efficiency Springfield Neighborhoods Hopkinton Agriculture Land Brownfields Policy and Practice

Domestic Studios & Workshops 40 42 44 46

48 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64

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70 72

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Economic Development Planning Shrinking Cities Health + Urbanism Biloxi Site & Environmental Systems Broad Connections Corridor Bayou Auguste Neighborhood The Meadowlands Katrina and NOLA Long Island Coast Bronx Waterfront Lincolnopolis Crowdsource City Water, Landscape, and Urban Design Salton Sea Coding Resilient Urbanism in South Florida Providence 2005 Santurce Puerto Rico

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108 110 112 114 116 118 120 122

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Digital Cities Clean Energy City Housing in China Beijing Urban Design Landscape Heritage Conservation Displacement & Rehabilitation in India Ending Manual Scavenging in Paliyad The Bay of Mumbai Urban Sustainability in Malaysia Parametric Urbanism in Singapore Tama New Town Metro Manila Slovakia Urban to Rural Bilbao Urbanism Zaragoza Digital Mile Kiryat Gat Industrial Urbanism Mati-Mozambique São Paulo Real Estate Downtown São Paulo Bus Rapid Transit Santiago Rethinking Informality Infrastructure in Medellín Formal and Informal Bogotá Urban Climate Adaptation in South Africa Transport Cartagena Simulating Sustainable Futures

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Preface Over the past half-century, the world’s cities have experienced both decline and resurgence. After decades of losing population and resources to suburban expansion, many cities are growing again, reclaiming their traditional roles as centers of culture, innovation, influence, and value.

In the decades to come, the most rapid growth will occur in the metropolitan regions of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, in settlements that currently lack the infrastructure, resources, and organization to cope with the challenges that confront them. Over the same period, however, the United States will also have to cope with the impacts of growth, as it adds over 100 million new residents to metropolitan areas that are increasingly ethnically diverse and economically divided, and whose postwar infrastructure is deteriorating.

Whatever their particular situation, cities worldwide will face a host of powerful forces, from climate change and large-scale migration to changes in family structure and rapid technological change.

Future-oriented urban projects rely on a sophisticated understanding of how those forces shape the built and natural environment. They also require a clear sense of how natural and cultural systems function in cities and how they interact with new design and planning interventions. Ideally, creators of these projects will capitalize on the development of advanced technologies to generate new interpretations of the flows and forces that shape the world’s urban systems.

Since its founding 80 years ago, the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT has consistently been rated the premier planning school in the world.

We are home to one of the largest urban planning faculties in the United States and enjoy the advantage of operating within the context of MIT’s culture of innovation and interdisciplinary knowledge creation. We see as our mission to educate students while advancing theory and practice in areas that will serve the nation and the world in the twenty-first century.

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We are committed to generating and disseminating knowledge, and to working with communities, governments, and industry to bring this knowledge to bear on the world’s most pressing challenges.

We provide our students with an education that combines rigorous academic study and the excitement of discovery with active engagement in the practice of place-making.

Our goal is to apply advanced analysis and design to understand and solve pressing urban and environmental problems. To this end, the department fosters a culture of learning by doing, while also supporting the development of influential theories in the areas of urban planning and design, economic development, and environmental policymaking. By complementing more traditional seminars with studios, workshops, and practica, our faculty, students, and researchers are able to translate path-breaking ideas into practical and enduring solutions.

Through this process of translating ideas into action, the department is having a profound impact on urban development worldwide. We are identifying the underlying trends, patterns, and systemic features of contemporary cities and their environments.

And we are planning for the future in ways that will enhance the built environment while nurturing its supporting systems.

Within this context, the theme that unifies urban planning at MIT is design. Through the design of physical spaces and forms, as well as of the policies and technologies that shape how those spaces are used, we aim to sustain and enhance the quality of the human environment at all scales, from the personal to the global. We believe that design—whether of physical space or of public policy—should be grounded in a commitment to improving lives, enhancing equity and social justice, promoting cultural enrichment, and fostering the responsible use of resources through creative problemsolving.

In the past last 10 years alone, over 600 students have participated in workshops, studios, and practica courses, taking them from Boston to Beijing and from Saint Louis to São Paulo. Through these projects, students are given an education beyond what is possible in the classroom, as they learn to contend with different cultures, language barriers, time and financial constraints, and the often-conflicting interests and objectives of multiple stakeholders and interest groups.

They host community meetings, conduct both qualitative and quantitative analysis, hold design charrrettes and learn about the social, legal, and historical context of place.

Communities and clients meanwhile, receive professional-level proposals from tomorrow’s leaders in the planning profession. Many organizations have incorporated the ideas generated through these MIT classes into their own plans, and have used the proposals while presenting to governments or other donors when seeking funding. Communities and project clients have also hired our graduates as executive

directors, planners, or project managers to carry out these plans once their studies are completed.

Our profession today covers topics ranging from equity, economic development, design, mobility, sustainability, ecology, heritage preservation, arts—and the list goes on (and on!). The projects showcased in this volume are just as varied: from protecting New York from future storm surges to designing sustainable energy systems in Beijing; from working with local non-profits to revitalize urban main streets in Boston to helping plan for growth in the outskirts of Maputo, Mozambique.

We have always been proud of the creativity exhibited by our students. As evidence of the impact of their innovative ideas, projects have been covered by national newspapers, journals, TV, and popular websites. Student work has also won numerous awards in national and international competitions, including the Federal Home Loan Bank’s Affordable Housing Competition, the White House’s Better Building Case Competition, the JPMorgan Chase Community Development Competition, and the Urban Land Institute’s Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition.

To document and celebrate all this great work, we have collected as many of these projects as possible over the past decade in a single volume. This collection provides only brief summaries of the various projects completed by our students between 20052015. Their efforts are complex and dynamic, and we can only scratch the surface in these few pages. Nevertheless, I hope these outlines display the breadth, reach, and impact of the work.

Eran Ben-Joseph Professor and Head Cambridge, MA 2015

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Belmont Boston Brookline Cambridge Gloucester Hopkinton Lawrence Lowell Lynn Medford New Bedford Newton Somerville Springfield Worcester

Massachusetts Studios & Workshops

“A plan is only as effective as the community support behind it, and we hope that this plan presents ideas that the community will embrace.”

“Creating design guidelines for the business corridor will help to establish a consistent, distinct, and welcoming integration of building and streetscape.”

Community Growth and Land-Use Planning TERRY SZOLD, ERAN BEN-JOSEPH, SUSAN SILBERBERG, ANNIS SENGUPTA Students grappled with questions such as: What is an appropriate vision for the neighborhood?

What interventions can the city make to encourage that vision?

How might the city finance those interventions?

What is the added value to the neighborhood from the projects in question?

What risks are involved?

Locations where we have worked include: Belmont, Brookline, Medford, Newton, and Somerville.

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Since 2005, students in the Community Growth and Land-Use Planning course have been engaged by professional planning associations with cities and towns in New England to envision redevelopment and recommend strategies to make plans a reality. In keeping with the smart-growth principles of vibrant and walkable neighborhoods for all citizens, the final projects promote and enhance the character of local neighborhoods, while suggesting ways in which they can grow and develop both economically and socially.

The goal for these teams is to create more livable, vibrant, urban neighborhoods, with special attention to historical research, an evaluation of existing conditions, and a needs assessment specifically targeted at five areas for improvement: open space (parks and greenways); transportation (public transit, parking, and access); housing & community (small business and community services); streetscapes; and catalyst properties (anchor real estate assets for the neighborhood).

Community meetings and personal interviews were primary methods for the needs assessment research; interviews included contact with city employees, business owners, neighborhood residents and community leaders.

The context for these projects always includes a thorough discussion of the planning process and contemporary challenges, as well as the formal Master Plans, Zoning Ordinances, Fiscal Action Plans, and Planning Studies in each location.

For example, Somerville’s 2012 “SomerVision Comprehensive Plan” focused on green infrastructure, a diverse mix of commercial and residential development through both new and repurposed buildings, and increased pedestrian and cyclist accessibility. Overall, it offered a proactive strategy for future land use, economic development, and neighborhood revitalization that can meet the needs of Union Square residents and benefit Somerville and the region at large.

Similarly, in 2008 the class recommended a program to connect job opportunities and training for youth with the establishment of a community beautification program, recommending that the City of Lowell partner with communitybased organizations to seek funding from the Massachusetts Office of Workforce Development to pilot a program similar to a Youth Urban Conservation Corps.

As envisioned, the Corps would employ local youth to care for trees, clean up litter, prevent illegal dumping, and provide home maintenance assistance to the elderly. Their efforts for beautification might catalyze other volunteer efforts, and instill an ethic of community cooperation and beautification in future generations.

Other recommendations focused more on the built environment. Buildings, infrastructure, and activities of the street should be arranged and presented in a way that is connected, convenient, accessible, and pedestrian friendly; showcases business owners’ investment in their small and diverse enterprises; makes the street attractive for residents and prospective residents; and contributes to the street’s traditional character.

Specifically, land-use policies regarding building form, height, mass, street frontage, and lot-coverage may be adjusted to facilitate key objectives. The visions set forth frequently highlighted ideas to some of the cities’ most pressing challenges such as affordable housing for all ages and backgrounds, safe and vibrant streets and public spaces, better connections to the open spaces, new retail development to serve community needs, and implementing change through rezoning.

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“Any investment made in a heritage building has the potential to create positive spillover effects for adjacent public spaces and abutting commercial uses.”

Historic Preservation, Design, & Development Karl Seidman, Susan Silberberg As a neighborhood, Hyde Park represents the City of Boston’s southernmost tip. Hyde Park’s extensive history, resources, and character make it an ideal investment locale for a Preservation-driven organization. Hyde Park’s development over time is most noticeable through its built heritage. Anchored by the First Congregational and Christ Churches, both featured on the National Register of Historic Places, the Cleary and Logan squares district features many buildings of architectural merit.

Historically, Irish, Italian and Polish people populated Hyde Park. In more recent decades the neighborhood has diversified greatly and now includes large Black and Hispanic populations. A significant percentage of Hyde Park’s minority population is Haitian, but Jamaican, Dominican, and Nigerian people also live in the neighborhood.

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Utilizing secondary data and community outreach, student teams analyzed the current assets, challenges and opportunities that the selected district offered with regard to social, physical, and economic development. The work was carried out in three main phases, including; researching background materials on the history of the district and relevant ongoing planning initiatives, an on-site inventory and analysis of the district’s characteristics, and the formulation of recommendations.

This work was intended to help advance a model of neighborhood development that utilized the preservation of historic resources as a tool to catalyze sustainable economic and social development. In exploring the nexus between historic preservation, design, and development, the main priorities were defined. Recommendations were targeted in areas that would catalyze further improvements throughout the district, as well as contribute to enhanced urban design outcomes in the future.

Furthermore, the perspective was that the rehabilitation of historic resources should not be viewed as an end in itself, but rather as a tool through which valuable and desired services and goods be made available to the existing population.

Finally, investment decisions should be aimed at celebrating and reestablishing important themes and narratives that appear throughout the history of the areas and that support current residents.

The intention of the final plan was to expose the existing strengths of the community by recommending general improvements as well as providing unique spaces for residents themselves to re-envision and engage with their district.

These plans were meant to retain flexibility and allow for change and unforeseen opportunities.

The recommendations and strategies included in the plan were designed to develop: spaces to walk, chat, and linger; sidewalks, streets, and open spaces which attract and retain pedestrians; spaces to play and celebrate; parking lots reinvented as multi-functional civic spaces; and a district of ongoing creativity with public arts as the medium for district image, tradition, change and community-building.

The students accounted both for the individual historic structures, and the surrounding public realm. The physical regeneration of catalyst structures is one area in which the direct investments would be most prominent.

The physical renovation of a building, and the demonstrated faith in the district’s history and future which it symbolizes, is an invaluable tool for sparking investment and interest in heritage across the district. The students suggested the success of these pilot investments would depend a great deal on the spaces around them, however.

Any targeted physical improvement of a building should partner with other actors to fund a physical revitalization of the surrounding pedestrian and vehicular environment. As the students point out, in this way the valuable resources of the district would not only embody the vision of the communities for well-preserved buildings, but for thriving and welcoming commercial districts that embrace their rich built heritage.

“Creating streets and open spaces that attract and retain pedestrians is one strategy to make the district more welcoming and increase friendliness to youth and to promote district commerce.”

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“If there is a way to couch arguments less in a ‘someday there might be this’ kind of context and more in the context of best practices regardless of climate change, we will enhance the public’s receptiveness to responding sooner.”

“The city of Gloucester is currently doing little explicitly to increase its resilience to climate change, but it has multiple efforts under way that provide a strong foundation for taking on climate-change risks in the future.”

Adapting to Climate Change Lawrence Susskind Average temperatures in New England are projected to rise 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the next several decades.

A majority of the population of Massachusetts, including several major cities, are found near its nearly 1,500 miles of coast.

The annual mean sea level along Boston’s shoreline has increased about 2.5 mm per year over the past 80 years.

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In fall 2009, student researchers interviewed 54 people in 19 Massachusetts cities to learn what efforts were under way to manage the likely impacts of climate change. The project selected four cities: Boston, Gloucester, Lynn, and New Bedford, for closer examination.

Most people interviewed knew that greenhouse gas emissions might be affecting New England’s climate, and many had been working on mitigation, trying to reduce emissions locally.

Legislation such as the Massachusetts Green Communities Act has motivated some cities to try to improve energy efficiency and make the shift to clean energy. However, many city officials and local leaders still have not begun to address the risks they face.

Even among cities that are on the forefront of mitigation efforts, the students found few have begun to think about adaptation, or planning ahead for the worst impacts of climate change. Positively though, it was found the Commonwealth’s Climate Change Adaptation Advisory Committee was trying to pin down the risks that will require attention.

Based on a close look at four cities, the class identified a number of steps that every city can take to kick off an effective climate change adaptation effort: > Begin conversations with interested parties about the risks associated with climate change: as with other natural disasters, we don’t know when or whether they will occur, but we can take precautions. > Cities

can use available data to assess vulnerabilities: while global change science had not produced precise predictions, enough information is usually available to assess a community’s vulnerabilities. Additionally, communities can build on existing risk management and hazard mitigation approaches – for example, public agencies in many cities regularly assess flood hazards, potential coastal erosion, and other impacts that overlap the effects of climate change.

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can use “scenario planning” to identify “no-regrets” actions: agree on actions that will help meet a variety of important objectives while simultaneously reducing climate change

risks. Instead of preparing a comprehensive list of everything that could be done to soften the impacts of climate change, public officials and local leaders can consider each incremental decision from an adaptation perspective.

The team hoped that by making leaders aware of these actions they could take here and now, they would begin to address one of the big challenges facing Massachusetts in the future.

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“In line with MIT@Lawrence’s action-research approach, the team was committed to engaging the community throughout the process by hosting a series of participatory community meetings attended by MIT faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community partners.”

MIT@Lawrence LORLENE HOYT, JAMES BUCKLEY, EZRA GLENN, Langley KEYES, AMBER BRADLEy Spring 2009: “Storymill” Lawrence Community Works’ “Union Crossing” was an innovative mill redevelopment project that sought to transform the physical, economic, social and psychological dimensions of the site and neighborhood. Students in the practicum conducted a critical assessment of the history of the site and the surrounding community, using video and web technology to pay tribute to the local history and build community connections around the development.

Fall 2010: “Taking Back Lawrence” The Fall 2010 practicum focused on foreclosed properties held by financial institutions (called real estate owned properties or “REOs”) and the neighborhood effects of vacant properties.

The City of Lawrence passed a local ordinance requiring owners of REO to register the property with the city, perform upkeep and

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notify the city of changes in sale. The final report analyzed the distribution and status of REOs, compliance with the local statute, issues of enforcement and provided recommendations for improving registration of properties, compliance and enforcement.

Fall 2011: “Focus on Arlington” In 2011 students partnered with the City’s Community Development Department and The Community Group (TCG) –a nonprofit community organization– to respond to a federal Promise Neighborhood planning grant.

The plan –intended to create the “Arlington Community of Excellence”– described a continuum of “cradle-through-college-tocareer” solutions for children and youth living in the city’s Arlington neighborhood. The Promise Neighborhood theory of change holds that a focus on the educational outcomes is not enough; transformation requires the integration and improvement of a wide range of services that touch children’s lives. Students in the course identified a number of key areas to focus on in the neighborhood, including vacant land inventory, preventing illegal dumping, and improving access to healthy food.

Lawrence is a small, ethnically diverse city 30 miles north of Boston. It lies along the Merrimack River, which has strong currents that prompted investors to plan and build an industrial city there in the early 1800s. The large, brick textile mills are the central physical feature of Lawrence to this day.

Lawrence and its residents face challenging economic and political conditions, stemming from this industrial legacy and subsequent economic and demographic upheavals. There are many small cities like Lawrence throughout the Northeast and Midwest; cities that were industrial powerhouses but now face uncertain futures.

MIT@Lawrence began in 1999 as a sustained campus-community partnership between faculty, students, and staff at MIT and civic leaders, residents, and community-based organizations in Lawrence, MA. This partnership included opportunities for service learning, technical assistance, and community-based service projects focused on affordable housing, community asset-building, and youth pathways to career and education.

Between 2004 and 2012, the core of MIT@ Lawrence has been the Department’s practicum course in “Information, Asset-building, and the Immigrant City.” Practica at DUSP embody the department’s commitment to engaging communities, encouraging teamwork and preparing our students for community impact after MIT.

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“Community engagement has been a crucial part of the visioning and planning process and the final plan is heavily informed by information gathered in interviews, community meetings and focus groups.”

“By developing a community vision, a set of goals and strategies, and an implementation framework, Main Streets can help Roslindale grow even more prosperous while maintaining its unique character – ensuring that the village’s best days are yet to come.”

Revitalizing Boston Main Streets Karl Seidman, SUSAN SILBERBERG Allston Village is a thriving neighborhood commercial district, full of economically successful, ethnically diverse, and culturally vibrant businesses. The district boasts a strong mix of service and retail businesses that positions it well to be an all-day district, and to cater to a wide range of visitors. While many of the privately controlled assets are among the district’s greatest strengths, the public realm shows a lack of maintenance and public accountability. In particular, perceptions of the district as being dirty and unsafe fuel an image mismatch that ultimately masks the district’s strengths.

Roslindale Village is one of Boston’s special places. The community is filled with unique physical assets—landmarks, interesting views, and numerous gathering places along a pedestrian-scale street grid. By the mid-20th century, Roslindale was one of the strongest commercial areas in southwest Boston, but lost many customers to suburban malls during the 1960’s. Local businesses closed as shoppers and competing businesses moved to shopping centers such as the Dedham Mall. As a result, the economic and phyical base of the district deteriorated in the 1970’s and 1980’s, with high rates of abandonment and arson.

In 1983, however, Roslindale Village became the first urban application of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Main Street model. The Roslindale Village Main Street organization has been working to improve the business district for over twenty years by refurbishing dozens of commercial buildings and façades, supporting local businesses, and organizing community events.

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For more than ten years, MIT’s Revitalizing Urban Main Streets practicum has partnered with urban commercial districts and Main Streets organizations. This biennial workshop focuses on economic development and urban design strategies that can be used to support vibrant urban commercial districts. Students begin by understanding existing conditions, and then move into analyzing major economic and physical design opportunities and challenges. From this work, they generate comprehensive commercial revitalization plans.

Although they will vary from project to project and year to year, final recommendations are generally meant to accomplish a number of goals including creating a stronger sense of place, enhancing the pedestrian environment, increasing commercial diversity, developing new open spaces, welcoming visitors more efficiently, building capacity amongst business and property owners, and communicating a new story to the region.

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“Short-term projects to enliven façades and increase access to pedestrian paths and green spaces have the potential to make Fields Corner a more vibrant and sustainable community.”

Boston Green-house James Buckley Sustainability is recognized as one of the most pressing challenges cities face today. To address this issue, the Greenhouse practicum explores ways to improve housing quality and affordability, increase energy savings, and promote transportation access as part of a neighborhood sustainability plan. Students work with a local client to define the terms of local sustainability for a specific Boston neighborhood, then develop an appropriate framework for action for the target site focusing on existing and future housing needs, community services, transit connections, and energy policy.

Locations where we have worked: Dorchester Bay, Fields Corner, and Codman Square Neighborhoods.

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The class has focussed on areas that, while often vibrant, face a number of challenges related to sustainability, equity, and development. Frequently, they are home to large minority populations. While many residents speak English at home, it is also common to hear French, Spanish, Creole, and other languages spoken in the communities. Most residents are low- to moderate-income, with incomes at or below 80 percent of Boston’s median income.

Each year, the class has generated inspiring proposals – focused on different locations and issues, but all with similar themes. They tend to focus on tried-and-true means of establishing dense mixed-use communities near public transit, known as transit-oriented development, as a way to increase public transit use and neighborhood walkability, reduce auto-related pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and support economic development.

The class typically begins with an exploration of the community’s demographics, land use patterns, housing types, transportation access, and general livability. Through this analysis, the team begins to understand where there are opportunities for intervention. For example, one year the group looked at the number of grocers in the area to understand how much access the residents had to fresh food – and discovered a dearth of large grocery stores and fresh produce. With this initial analysis complete, the class formulated a plan for advancing neighborhood sustainability – defined as meeting the immediate community needs, while working towards long-term environmental and economic wellbeing.

Each year the individual plans responded to the unique needs of the community they were meant to serve. One class proposed a Community Health Corridor offering healthy food, job training, and community and green spaces. Others chose to look at policies based on a few major themes such as creating new neighborhood centers, activating vacant and underutilized parcels, and increasing neighborhood amenities.

Each plan offers a number of concrete proposals and guidelines to accomplish the overarching goals. Some projects, such as activating walls through art or vacant lots through gardens, can be implemented in the short term by reaching out to local businesses, building owners, the City, and local artists. Other potential projects may be much longer term, such as building bike lanes on high-traffic streets. These projects are politically

and logistically complicated and would require action and funding from the City. Therefore, they are not likely to be implemented in the short term, but community groups should consider advocating for them in the long term. In this way, the class has provided a vision and toolkit to their clients, which could be used in the short- and long-term to stimulate real improvements in the areas they serve.

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“Effective resident involvement involves significant long-term planning by both MIT and DSNI. Going forward, the point-people at DSNI and DUSP need to ensure that plans are made in advance when resident involvement is required or desired.”

“Obtaining as much background information as possible, and clearly thinking through objectives and processes is essential before starting any mapping projects.”

Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative Ceasar McDowell, Ofer Lerner Dudley street neighborhoods were facing critical urban disinvestment and abandonment of the early 1970s. The population declined 20% between 1970 and 1980, and a corresponding amount of building demolition left the neighborhood in a state where 30% of the land, excluding streets, was vacant. The vacant land had a blighting effect. In the late 1970s, designers and planners were interested in the topic of community development and community collaboration were established at that time.

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DUSP has a vested interest in sustainable development in Boston area ßas a social justice objective and as a learning and teaching tool for urban planning students in the department.

The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) a community development organization in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood has engaged in innovative community development since its inception. When Professor Ceasar McDowell was looking for a local partnership organization with which D USP students could work on issues of sustainable and economic development, DSNI was a natural choice.

Each project carried out through the practicum was to be a test bed for the DUSP-DSNI collaboration, giving students and their partners at DSNI the opportunity to explore the ways in which the partnership can develop in the long term.

For example, one of DSNI’s earliest goals was to have maps that were “on par or better than maps from the Boston Redevelopment Authority.” To respond this need, the practicum class’s first project was to build mapping capacity for DSNI. By the end of the semester, they had published a three-year mapping capacity-building plan, a multi-map project, and an organizational structure for managing maps and mapping data at DSNI.

While the plan offered a possible pathway for DSNI to have internal mapping capacity, the organization could not wait such a long time to finally have the final product, so students created a number of maps that helped advance the work of DSNI while also creating buy-in for the capacity building plan.

In the years following, the class has taken on other tasks such as re-imagining and improving a local park. Besides giving students relevant applied training, the practicum built a learning and flexible partnership that responded to the needs of the community.

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“Complete Streets is an initiative by which cities, states, and other jurisdictions make a policy decision that all future roadway projects will be designed to safely accommodate all users.”

Rethinking Boston’s Biking Streets Eran Ben-Joseph, Nicole Freedman According to Scientific American, ‘man on a bicycle’ ranks first in efficiency among traveling animals and machines in terms of energy consumed in moving a certain distance as a function of body weight.

The U.S. could save 262 million of gallons of gasoline a year by increasing bicycling from 1% to 1.5% of all trips.

About 12 bicycles can be parked in the space required for one automobile.

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For years, Boston has been considered one of the most difficult cities to bike in due to the absence of viable linkages and access paths for cyclists.

In a city that offers a variety of other transit amenities including an extensive subway and commuter rail system, a sizeable bus network, and a highly compact and walkable urban core, cyclists have long been ignored.

As part of their class, the MIT students devised an idea to reimagine transportation related facilities in the city as part of either a general design intervention or a larger vision, based on the Boston Society of Architects, SHIFTboston challenge. These projects ran the gamut from using hot air balloons to move Bostonians and tourists around the city, to creating interactive trip planners, to installing solar roads.

In 2010, students in DUSP focused on reimagining the city of Boston with an emphasis on mode shift, through the development of bicycle and pedestrian access paths.

The interventions focused on the design and incorporation of bicycle lanes, bicycle facilities, and street elements that enhance the presence and visibility of bikers. Where possible, strategies promoted development of shared street realms that accommodate a variety of modes of travel including pedestrians, motorists, bicyclists, transit riders, and persons with disabilities. Careful attention was paid to linking existing sections of bike routes, and interventions have also drawn from urban areas such as Portland and Manhattan that have greatly improved bicycle and pedestrian access strategies through planning.

Through all these projects, the goal was to contribute to a comprehensive bicycle and intermodal transportation plan for the city of Boston and offer specific design solutions and planning ideas for the construction and implementation of Boston’s future transportation plan.

“Combining the proposed plans in the intervention areas with the existing and future routes would provide an extensive continuous network, bringing Boston one step closer to being a world class cycling city.”

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Boston Seaport Innovation District Dennis frenchman, steve weikal, andrea chegut The site is 17 acres in size, owned by the Massachusetts Port Authority, and currently is used mainly as a truck parking lot. It was reserved over a decade ago for a US Post Office distribution center to replace a facility on the Fort Point channel.

Within two-blocks of the site are the Boston Convention Center and hotels, the city’s Cruise Ship terminal, the heart of the Innovation District burgeoning with major R+D companies, and the iconic South Boston residential neighborhood, with new housing under construction.

The site has direct access to the waterfront on the Reserve Channel. MassPort is interested in taking advantage of these development potentials. However, to achieve success will require resolving significant entitlement, environmental, and design issues, as well as balancing the conflicting interests of many stakeholders.

“This subject provides students with skills and experience in synthesizing mixed-use real estate development projects. It addresses the interaction among design, finance, market and public policy factors.”

DUSP’s Real Estate Development Studio engages real estate, planning, and architecture students in preparing professional development proposals – including market analysis, program, design, finance, and approval strategies – for real world sites and clients. In 2015 the studio tackled development of the 22 acre Fargo Terminal site, on the waterfront in South Boston, part of the burgeoning Boston Innovation District.

The Fargo terminal site sits strategically within easy walking distance of the Boston Convention Center and hotels, Cruise Ship Terminal, and the classic South Boston residential neighborhood.

By vehicle it is a few minutes from the Financial District, and Logan Airport. All of these areas are now experiencing major reinvestment.

The Fargo Terminal, now a parking lot, owned by the Massachusetts Port Authority (MassPort), client for the studio. MassPort wanted to capitalize on the skyrocketing value of the property, however, it was also committed to maintaining industrial jobs in the seaport area.

Could industrial production be mixed with high-tech employment, housing, tourism, and entertainment?

Student teams proposed highly innovative development schemes, incorporating clean 21st century industries from digital fabrication, to food production, and high-tech craft boat building. Space for co-working, start-ups, maker firms, and training were also key themes.

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These critical activities are supported on the site by the development of high-value tech office, housing, hotel, retail, and entertainment. To successfully mix such disparate uses - while providing services, circulation, and protection from the sea - requires sophisticated design and financial strategies, achieved by the teams in different, and provocative, ways.

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“The technology we are proposing is far better than a simple ‘run of the mill’ programmable thermostat. Installing the proper control and monitoring systems in homes can achieve energy savings between 3 and 26%.”

Cambridge Energy Efficiency Harvey Michaels, Lawrence Susskind While states and utilities have developed experience over several decades of programs targeting business and consumer energy efficiency, these programs lack both the scale and depth to achieve large scale reductions in energy consumption.

A successful multifamily efficiency program could help to realize Cambridge’s greenhouse gas emission reduction goal – to 20% below 1990 emission levels.

Multifamily housing accounts for an estimated one third of the energy use in the city of Cambridge, with an estimated efficiency potential of 21%.

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The energy efficiency practicum focuses on the study and design of policies and planning processes with the potential to enable deep and scalable energy efficiency. The practicum emphasizes the development of communitybased energy efficiency strategies, with “community” defined as a broader term than only a city or a town. Students in the class examined neighborhood, affinity group, and Web 2.0 online communities for their relative dynamics, advantages, and pitfalls in their approach, and develop skills to craft and analyze new policy ideas generally, as well as effective consultation with community, industry, utility, federal, and state energy policy decision makers.

Group work on the design and likely outcome of programs included approaches to leverage community resources for an “efficiency marketing innovation fund” to support pilot projects and evaluation of experimental approaches to efficiency with the goal of discovering new cost-effective methods of outreach and deployment. In order to resolve several of the barriers to energy efficiency, the class explored options for a community-based campaign for energy efficiency.

“To resolve several of the barriers to energy efficiency, we propose a communitybased campaign for energy efficiency, where utility companies take advantage of trusted community networks in order to create excitement and commitment for adopting energy efficiency.”

In 2012, the students proposed a set of multifamily energy efficiency experiments that could be implemented by NSTAR and the City of Cambridge.

In developing this proposal, they examined the state of energy efficiency programs available in Massachusetts; assessed the unique barriers to multifamily efficiency; assessed the concerns of stakeholders likely to be involved in implementing the pilot; and imagined how local community organizations and “big data” could be leveraged to design the next decade of energy efficiency programs.

Recommendations included a “Base Citywide Component” that included a streamlined program process, tools for community and resident empowerment, adequate financial tools to address split incentive, and innovative technologies appropriate for the multifamily sector, as well as a “Data Central Component” to develop new tools to improve access to information about building-level energy performance and potential and that are intended to assist with market transformation.

The class’s final report included a rough plan for evaluation that would allow the energy efficiency field as a whole to benefit from the learning that can be extracted from this pilot.

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Springfield Neighborhoods Ceasar McDowell, Karl Seidman, Susan Silberberg, Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, Vanessa Otero Each year the students would: Review reports and data from each of the practica that have been conducted.

Assess the extent to which the recommendations from each report have been acted upon, and understand the reasons why or why not actions were taken.

Examine whether there has been any change in context or data related to the areas of study.

Assess the level to which progress has been made towards achieving the goals associated with each recommendation.

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Evaluate whether any of the recommendations not acted upon are still strategically viable, and identify those that need to be adjusted to reflect any changes in context or data.

Create a new report for submission to the client(s) that compiles the results of the above analysis and provides an updated status summary.

Investigate models for transitions in university/ community partnerships and offer a framework to support transitions for existing and future long term community based initiatives in DUSP. Since 2000, the Department of Urban Studies and Planning has addressed community issues in collaboration with the North End Campus Committee. DUSP and various leaders within the North End of Springfield have a strong history to create and implement initiatives that address current community issues and opportunities facing the residents.

The North End is one of 17 neighborhoods in Springfield and it is the third largest urban center in Massachusetts. The North End is also one of the most socio-economic disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Springfield is one of many urban areas nationwide in which Latinos experience the most disadvantaged neighborhood environments, including high poverty and unemployment rates.

In 2005, the students developed an Economic Development Plan for the North End. The project team focused on creating a population-based approach to economic development and utilized multiple methods for gathering information and understanding the economic development needs of the community, including site visits, quantitative analyses, stakeholder interviews, focus groups, a survey, and client working sessions. Based on its findings and analysis, the students had developed a set of institutional capacity-building and programmatic recommendations.

Consistent with the North End’s renewed focus on public health, in 2009 the Springfield Practicum focused on the relationship between neighborhood environment and residents’ health. Their efforts focused on understanding the food environment, i.e. the availability of healthy food in the neighborhood.

Drawing upon community initiatives around food justice in other areas, we used the findings of our research as a starting point for suggesting strategies that the North End could use to raise community awareness about the food environment, and to engage both citizens and store owners in improving the neighborhood food environment.

Over the course of the partnership, reports have been generated to assist the community in achieving goals in areas such as food access, community health, small business economic development, physical planning of the North End campus, affordable housing, and community information infrastructure.

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Hopkinton Agriculture Land Eran Ben-Joseph During the Spring 2006 “Site and Landscape Planning� course, students worked with the Town of Hopkinton Land Use Study Committee to analyze, evaluate and develop site planning scenarios for Weston Nurseries site.

Weston Nurseries comprises approximately 700 acres of land in the town, more than 5% of the total land area. For several years the owners of the property had been investigating ways to extract value from the land to enable the business to re-invent itself for the next generation of the family. Most of the parcels have been used for agricultural and horticultural purposes, or uses accessory thereto, since Weston Nurseries relocated its operation to Hopkinton in the 1940s.

Since a majority of the Site consists of land under Chapter 61A agreements, the Town had a statutory right of first refusal to acquire parcels offered by the owners.

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At one point, 615 acres of the property was offered for sale, which presented Hopkinton with both enormous opportunities and challenges.

What and how much of this land should be developed? Which areas should be preserved?

What sort of development would be best? What were the pros and cons of the possible uses and the future costs associated with it?

Due to the size, location and landmark significance of the Weston Nurseries property, the Town hoped to identify and explore all commercially reasonable means to acquire the Site, including but not limited to an outright purchase by the Town or formal or informal partnerships with developers, land conservation groups, and other interested organizations.

Over the semester, students assembled into five different teams to study the site and propose alternative solutions for future development at the site. This process included examination of the spatial organization of uses, parcelization, roadway design, grading, utility systems, stormwater runoff, parking, traffic and off-site impacts, as well as landscaping.

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Brownfields Policy and Practice Jim Hamilton There are several hundred thousand Brownfield sites across the country.

The large number of these sites, combined with the fact that a majority of these properties are in urban and historically under-served communities, dictate that Brownfield redevelopment stands to be a common theme in urban planning for the foreseeable future.

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Successful Brownfields redevelopment requires the coordinated and collected efforts of myriad stakeholders, including but not limited to: residents and civic organizations, environmental professionals of several specialties, financial and legal experts, developers, politicians, regulators and the media. Students in DUSP’s “Brownfields Policy and Practice” class developed a grounded understanding of the Brownfield lifecycle: how and why they were created, their potential role in community revitalization and the general processes governing their redevelopment.

Using case studies and guest speakers from the public, private and non-profit sectors, students honed a suite of skills to enable them to effectively address the problems posed by these inactive sites.

In 2005, students worked in the City of Lynn, Massachusetts, where many brownfields are locked into a destructive non-development cycle due to fears of current and former owners, funders, service-providers, and city agencies about incurring liability for past or future environmental harm. To break this cycle, the Lynn Economic Development and Industrial Corporation issued an RFP for a master plan and community consultation tackling the Lynn waterfront: the largest undeveloped waterfront parcel in greater Boston. Students, fully-loaded with brownfields theory and ready to gather some practical experience, jumped on the opportunity to pitch in.

The designated Waterfront Planning Area contained approximately 200 acres, almost a quarter of which was vacant or undeveloped.

Although the RFP called for a local charette and pro forma community consultation,

the students suspected that community groups in Lynn might have more to say about the long-awaited development, and could provide insight into viable end-uses if polled more intensively. The class identified and surveyed community interests in Lynn well beyond the short-list included in the RFP, and – through these interviews – it was proposed that latent stakeholder ideas could be brought to the fore while also increasing local understanding about ideas and possibilities for the waterfront site.

True to expectations, preliminary interviews unleashed an outpouring of pent-up ideas, hopes and aspirations to participate in the waterfront development.

DUSP’s contribution was to strengthen the planning process and set the stage for a redevelopment effort that benefits from the active participation of a broad constituency.

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Baltimore, MD Biloxi, MS Buffalo, Nassau County, New York, NY Chicago, East St Louis, IL Dallas, Houston, TX Lincoln, NE Los Angeles, Salton Sea, San Francisco, CA Meadowlands, NJ Minneapolis, MN New Orleans, LA Everglades, Palm Beach, Broward County, FL Philadelphia, PA Portland, ME Providence, RI Puerto Rico Stagecoach, CO

Domestic Studios & Workshops

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Atlanta, GA

Economic Development Planning Karl Seidman Portland, ME Portland is Maine’s largest economic hub. As a city of 64,000, it provides an urban center for the region but maintains the friendly atmosphere of a New England town. Many of the qualities that contribute to its high quality of life are also economic assets, such as its restaurants and fresh seafood, arts district, and public parks and coastline. At the same time, the recent economic downturn has put a damper on major development projects and tightened city budgets. In addition, Portland’s population is aging, and there is concern about the city’s ability to attract young people who will stay.

Rhode Island

“What was most impressive was the variation and range of student recommendations, oftentimes suggesting investment in streetscaping, transportation, local festivals and other public events, to stimulate economic activity and urban vibrancy in a multitude of ways .”

Rhode Island has a strong ship- and boat-building industry that is a crucial part of the state economy. In 2012, there were a total of 3,399 employees working in the ship and boat-building industry, earning a total of nearly $200 million in annual wages. However, the industry is vulnerable to economic recession and relies on a workforce that is aging faster than it is hiring younger workers.

Worcester, MA Worcester, MA is a regional center for health care, higher education, biotech, and insurance while also offering amenities for residents and visitors, including major arts institutions and two prominent dining districts. Yet, a national decline in manufacturing has resulted in significant jobs retention, workforce development, and land redevelopment challenges. While the City’s foreign-born population is one the fastest growing groups in Worcester, this immigrant population lags behind other residents in terms of income, wages and educational attainment.

“By targeting small scale arts and cultural events downtown, and by enabling entrepreneurship and business recruitment to occur downtown, the City can achieve its development agenda and also increase the impact for business creation and employment.”

Over the past decade, students have worked across New England to assist cities and regions develop economic development plans.

At the start of the class, students research their client city, reading previous reports on the local economy, followed by visits and briefings with local organizations concerned with planning and economic development. The class also completes stakeholder interviews, a data driven demographic and economic profile and explore key industry and assets to frame economic development priorities and identify focus areas for detailed strategy formulation. These focus areas reflect the unique challenges, assets and opportunities in each region. Business retention, life sciences and foodrelated businesses were priorities in Portland.

In Worcester, the plan focused on downtown revitalization, immigrant entrepreneurship and retaining and growing high-wage “secondtier industries. With Rhode Island, students contributed to a statewide economic development planning strategy process by formulating plans to help diversify the shipbuilding industry, enhance support for minority and immigrant entrepreneurs and use local tax incentives more effectively to advance state and local economic development.

Once priority areas are chosen in consultation the client and other stakeholders, students teams are organized that work with the client and local experts to formulate strategies and implementation plans. Student teams complete detailed research and analysis, study relevant case studies and best practices from other cities, regions and states and conduct interviews and focus group and to inform their recommendations.

Findings and preliminary recommendations

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from this phase are presented to the client, other stakeholders and implementation partners to test their validity and gain further feedback that is used to inform the final plan and recommendations.

A final plan report that details strategy recommendations and their implementation is prepared and presented to stakeholders, city officials, and other community members. The goal of the report is to provide specific strategies, policies and actions for city and business community leadership on how to expand the local or regional economy, provide jobs and increase income and wealth for area residents, and support quality of life. The strategies build on a broad base of economic development approaches, utilizing the various city and regional assets and expanding existing capacity to promote innovation and collaborative relationships.

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“Vacancy in industrial cities is a widespread American condition. The potential to intervene in such transitional sites is an exciting challenge for urban designers.”

Buffalo, NY (2010) Buffalo has always been dependent on marine infrastructure, but structural changes today confront the city with a myriad of crises, including the suburbanization of the middle class, shifts toward the Sunbelt and racial polarization.

The city’s dynamic and changing neighborhoods offered students opportunities to reimagine neighborhood form, providing new civic spaces and housing types for needy residents.

east Saint Louis, il (2012) In 1900, St. Louis was the fourth largest city in the US; since 1950, it has lost more than 50 percent of its population. Neighboring East St. Louis has a devastating unemployment rate of around 20 percent, and 30 percent of its residents live below the poverty rate.

While its neighbors have shrunk in size and wealth, the tiny community of Sauget has prospered. With only 159 citizens, Sauget’s tax base is sustained by industrial and retail activities.

Shrinking Cities Brent D. Ryan, El hadi jazairy Beginning in 2010, a series of Shrinking Cities Urban Design Studios examined the rehabilitation and re-imagination of declining American cities.

Analyzing the city at three scales – citywide, neighborhood, and individual dwellings – students analyzed urban form and other variables in order to shape innovative design solutions, enhance social amenity, and improve economic performance through strategic and creative geographical, urban design and architectural thinking. While the environments of places like East St. Louis and Buffalo may seem extreme, these have come to define a certain type of

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American urban form: the industrial city in transition. Shrinking cities, with under-utilized land, high rates of property abandonment, and socioeconomic challenges, are ideal locations to explore new forms and modes of industrial activity and neighborhood design. Human capital, vacant lands, and industrial byproducts are untapped resources that can assist the transition to places participating in contemporary economies and providing housing and civic amenities where people are proud to work and live. In several cases, the studio projects sought to identify new modes of industrial profitability in the context of shifting urban areas.

Baltimore, MD (2013) Baltimore is located in a prosperous region categorized by growth. But since 1950, Baltimore has deindustrialized, losing jobs and building stock in tandem.

Two studios examined abandoned or underperforming residential and industrial properties in a “ring of disinvestment” surrounding downtown. Some sites were dense and residential, others were diffuse and industrial.

Students addressed the economic transition away from heavy industry, while also seeking to provide new urban forms that meshed with contemporary ideals of ecology and sustainability and providing attainable jobs for local residents.

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Health + Urbanism Alan berger, alexander D’hooghe, adEle naudE santos Through research, prototypes, and demonstration projects, this multi-year initiative investigates and documents the correlations between the built environment and health, and develops evidence-based guidelines and design solutions that support human and environmental health in and around cities.

Working with selected urban areas, this project seeks to identify and activate effective strategies that are locally relevant and globally scalable. Collaboration and knowledge sharing is a fundamental intention of this project.

The issues and opportunities call for perspective from a wide range of stakeholders and disciplines... including urban planning, public health, medicine, technology, finance, government, business, transportation, building product manufacturing, construction, engineering, among others.

Cities that were used for the case study: Atlanta, GA; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Houston, TX; Minneapolis, MN; New York, NY; Los Angeles and San Francisco, CA.

“We are interested in evaluating health factors that are traceable to different urban environments and explaining health myths that leads to professional biases about urban forms.”

The AIA partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Advanced Urbanism (CAU) on Decade of Design: Health + Urbanism as a part of the AIA’s Decade of Design Commitment to Action with the Clinton Global Initiative. In order to further this collaboration, and choose the cities that will be laboratories for further research, the CAU held a course titled, “Advanced Research Workshop in Landscape + Urbanism.”

The initial focus for the Health and Urbanism Initiative is to study the intersections of design, environment, urban planning, and health to develop contemporary insights about future urban form and adaptation in American cities.

Several cities were chosen as laboratories for research, analysis, intervention, and ultimately the development of new metrics for urban design

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proposals. Teams evaluated health factors that were traceable to different urban environments and explained health myths that lead to professional biases about current and future urban forms.

The semester was structured so that students studied eight metropolitan regions. The research included field work, novel forms of geographic and environmental analysis, social factors, and ultimately the development of indexed priorities detailing the largest impacts where design may influence future urban health improvements.

Students traveled to meet with local public sector officials in the identified communities and also be analyzed a wide range of data as a part of their projects.

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“The economic objective that defined our approach included celebrating the casinos as part of the Biloxi identity without compromising the neighborhood fabric.”

“Our plan demonstrates how to restore the bayou and cross the water in a way that allows the natural system to function at full capacity during storm surges and other natural events.”

Biloxi Site & Environmental Systems Eran Ben-Joseph, Christine Gaspar, David Perkes Wetlands play an important role in mitigating the impacts of even minor storms; by slowing water runoff, they minimize the risk of streams and rivers overflowing.

Wetlands serve as a source of groundwater recharge by allowing water to percolate into the ground instead of flowing away.

By trapping and holding water, wetlands store nutrients and pollutants in the soil, allowing cleaner water to flow into larger bodies of water.

Development in the last 100 years has severely impinged on the historic landscape of coastal bayous.

Communities throughout the Gulf Coast are returning to wetlands restoration as a way to restore ecological health, create beneficial public spaces, and offset the impacts of storms.

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For this studio, students developed a plan to rebuild the community of East Biloxi after Hurricane Katrina. Their intention was to reconnect the neighborhood with the broader community. Isolated geographically, economically, and culturally from other neighborhoods in the city, efforts were made to use street revitalizations along with a network of parks and open space bike paths to help integrate this neighborhood back into the city.

Students intended to restore and enhance the Auguste Bayou wetlands area. Neglected for years, this undervalued asset holds immense promise for helping lessen the damage from small to medium sized storms. In doing so, restoration can also create important wildlife habitat and be woven into the larger East Biloxi open space network.

They set to work designing proposals for rebuilding their site. Besides explaining how maximizing wetlands and bayous and minimizing development in those areas will benefit the city, they encouraged new initiatives meant to benefit the community economically and socially, as well as ecologically. One of the most innovative ideas was to move the connector road to the waterfront, linking opportunities and shared amenities across the community. In addition, they recommended ways in which new casinos proposed for the neighborhood could become good local citizens; operators could construct and maintain exciting attractions such as a ferris wheel, mini golf course, and beach, to be enjoyed by residents.

They also suggested plans for a grocery store, and a mixture of affordable multifamily housing and upscale waterfront homes.

The class decided which land would be most appropriate for conservation and a return to its natural state. They then began looking at the potential for strategies to promote the expansion of wetlands including bioswales, elevated housing to mitigate flooding, and the removal of redundant infrastructure that was unintentionally creating dams.

The students outlined a plan for the private land surrounding Auguste Bayou to be turned into a conservation easement, sold to a land trust, or purchased by the city. Once restored, the bayou could become a community asset instead of a liability, with future uses including bird watching, walking, fishing and environmental education.

They would decommission segments of the road, break up the existing shoreline to create islands at the mouth of the bayou, and extend the bayou along its historic course in East Biloxi. Far from

being a finalized plan, these interventions were offered as a suite of possibilities; nevertheless, they did illustrate that it is possible to simultaneously meet the economic, social, and ecological needs of the community.

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Broad Connections Corridor Revitalization Karl Seidman, Susan Silberberg Broad Community Connections converted a vacant supermarket building into an innovative fresh food hub named ReFresh.

Over subsequent years, DUSP interns and students in Seidman’s Financing Economic Development class continued to work with BCC on several occasions.

“Part of what makes Broad Street special is that it is surrounded by unique and diverse neighborhoods that all utilize the corridor.”

“BCC and ReFresh tenants are working with over 30 organizations to coordinate health-related activities and improve health incomes.”

After an unsuccessful bid to become an official Urban Main Street under the Louisiana State Main Street Program, a group of civic-minded area residents around the Broad Street corridor formed an ad-hoc steering committee to work with the MIT Revitalizing Urban Main Street class, taught by Karl Seidman and Susan Silberberg to use post-Hurricane Katrina planning momentum to transform this vehicular thoroughfare between four neighborhoods into a new connector and destination. Some of the planning challenges included: how could Broad Street become a place to linger instead of a place to pass through—attracting more pedestrians than cars?; and how could Broad Street thrive in the face of decreasing city population, poor building quality, unusually long length, and lack of attractive green space given its role as a transition space without a sense of ownership?

From January to May 2007, 14 students in the Main Streets practicum worked to document economic and physical conditions along Broad Street, understand the rapidly changing recovery environment in New Orleans, engage and gain the trust of the diverse group of residents and business owners throughout the large commercial district to guide short and long-term improvements to the Broad Street corridor.

Another project challenge resulted from a client group that was not an official entity with planning and regulatory authority, paid staff, or other resources. To help this group of community leaders move forward, the Broad Connections plan had detailed proposals for new organizations to undertake plan implementation.

After completion of the Broad Connections plan, Karl Seidman and MIT graduate student Jeff Schwartz continued to work with local partners to form a new non-profit Broad Community Connections (BCC), complete their application for 501(c) (3) tax exempt status, and develop a successful state Main Street application.

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With state Main Street designation and funding, BCC hired recent MCP graduate Jeff Schwartz as its first Executive Director. This work included completing a market analysis and preliminary development plan to convert a large vacant supermarket building into an innovative fresh food hub named ReFresh.

After several years of work, BCC succeeded in attracting a supermarket and several non-profit organizations as tenants, formed a partnership with L&M Development and securing financing to complete the project. The ReFresh project opened in February 2014 with a Whole Foods Market, Liberty’s Kitchen culinary job training program, a nutrition education center operated

by Tulane Medical School and several other non-profit tenants. In more than a year, the ReFresh project has fostered multiple collaborations among its tenants, spurred a new coalition and approaches to community health services, greatly exceeded Whole Foods’ sales projections and become a national model for fresh food and healthy places initiatives.

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Bayou Auguste Neighborhood Eran Ben-Joseph, Christine Gaspar, David Perkes Most of East Biloxi is located within the 100-year floodplain and much of its terrain is located seven feet or more below the base flood elevation.

Hurricane Katrina destroyed over 50% of the homes in East Biloxi and flooded many of those remaining.

Of the buildings destroyed or later demolished as a result of Katrina, over 65 percent were located on land less than ten feet above sea level.

The Bayou Auguste Neighborhood Wetland Park Project restored 1.5 acres of wetland and removed over 100 cubic yards of debris.

Over 200 students and teachers participated in the Bayou Auguste Neighborhood Wetland Park project.

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This project helped implement a community plan for East Biloxi, MS. Without a conventional client, the student design team secured multiple grants, leading a partnership of the City of Biloxi, the Biloxi Housing Authority, the Biloxi Public School District, and a local land trust to leverage grant funds with in-kind and volunteer labor.

Working with the underrepresented members of the community to produce plans shaped by their values and concerns, restoring Bayou Auguste became an important part of the community’s effort to rise above a long history of being undervalued and to make a public asset from neglected and degraded land.

The goals of the Bayou Auguste project were to restore and expand the natural habitat, to make a beautiful natural place free of invasive species and litter, to provide public access and learning opportunities, and to increase local environmental stewardship. To reveal the site’s social and ecological potential, the project reshaped the stream banks to create tidal marsh habitat and open views into the constructed wetland. To provide streambank stability and stormwater filtration, a gabion wall was constructed reusing concrete from the removed retaining wall and filled with locallysourced oyster shells—recognized by residents

as part of the history of the Gulf Coast. These same materials were used in making an outfall structure, which reduces stormwater velocity and prevents erosion at the mouth of the stormwater culvert. Volunteers participated in the construction of these elements, as well as installing erosion control materials (including 5,000 native plants) and removing debris – in total, over 2,800 hours of service.

At the same time as the Deep Water Horizon oil spill was spoiling the Gulf of Mexico, the Bayou Auguste design team initiated work with the local public school to teach students and their parents about the ecology of the bayou. These educational programs engaged the local community in ways to improve the bayou’s important functions: to restore and improve nursery habitat for fish and shrimp, essential to the local economy; to reduce pollution and debris entering the ocean through the integrated bayou and stormwater system; and to create marshland to contain floodwater from extreme storm events.

The transformation of this landscape, place, and the public perception of Bayou Auguste is a major key to the regeneration of East Biloxi. The project intended to add value incrementally over time, as the plants mature; as the birds, fish, and mammals inhabit the stream and its banks; and as the neighborhood resumes access to and use of this amenity.

Thanks to the efforts of all involved students and partners, the Bayou Auguste Neighborhood Wetland Park has transformed a degraded tidal stream into a landscape where nature and community come together.

“The technical and organizational work of the project’s design team has brought national partners, the city’s public works department, school children, and hundreds of volunteers together to create a natural park out of a neglected bayou.”

Finally, Bayou Auguste provides an important opportunity for the community to enjoy wildlife, encourages environmental stewardship, and fosters an appreciation for the unique coastal environment that makes Biloxi home.

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“A major flood zone and sponge for the metro area, the Meadowlands also have the capacity to become a veritable regional park, and a driver for new development along its edges.”

The Meadowlands Alan Berger, Alexander d’Hooghe Developed largely at MIT, Systemic Design merges the existing stresses on a particular urban area or site with multi-layered, time-based strategies.

Systemic Design seeks to interact with the environmental, economical, and programmatic stresses across larger territories than only singular locations.

The deliberate semi-independence from the surrounding systems liberates a project from conforming to that which surrounds it, and ultimately, allows it to change the status quo within an urban system. An object-based approach interprets urbanization not as a system but as a finite accumulation of discrete decisions by different individuals and decision-makers.

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“A central discursive mechanism of the studios has been the distinction between a reading of urban territory as a question of interconnected systems versus a constellation of singular objects.”

The Meadowlands is a large former marsh and flood zone just west of Manhattan. Over the last century, the basin has collected an impressive quantity of critical infrastructures (port, utilities), while partially crumbling under an increasing pressure for regular residential and urban development. Most of the stakeholders agree that development and ecology should have the capacity to reinforce each other’s value.

Today, however, we are in a situation where the proximities and adjacencies between the different programs and systems deployed throughout the meadowlands are not reinforcing each other positively. Recent efforts by the Meadowlands commission have stabilized the ecosystem, but overall there is no vision about how to address the continuing pressure for further urbanization.

In 2012, this studio dovetailed with a post-Sandy recovery study by the MIT CAU+ZUS+Urbanisten consortium, commissioned by HUD’s “Rebuildby-Design” effort. However, its efforts and output were performed in a spirit of academic independence. The studio took as its primary assumption a need for 15,000 multi-story residential units in proximity to a continuing (and growing) presence of distribution centers and near newly defined regional park. This need was explored on three scales: where in the overall Meadowlands basin should these developments be accommodated? How should they be configured? What kind of typologies can we invent or fine-tune that will allow for the coexistence of residential and logistics programs?

This latter question is of great importance for any vision of the future Meadowlands as a basin where urbanization, ecology, and logistics can co-exist.

The studio aimed to arrive at a 2-3 distinct overall visions for the Meadowlands, elaborated at different scale levels. Above all, the themes and topics of the studio involved design of resilient urban districts, including urban forms and typologies that mix logistics/industrial uses with residential development.

Additionally, it considered the design of a functional wetland system to increase absorption and reduce flood risk, and the creation of critical infrastructure (transportation, energy distribution) that multitask beyond their initial program and are able to become civic, public objects and monuments for the new Meadowlands.

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Katrina and NOLA Ceasar McDowell, J. Phillip Thompson, JoAnn Carmin 80% of New Orleans flooded after the levees failed.

Hurricane Katrina was the most costly hurricane in history.

70% of New Orleans’ occupied housing was damaged in the storm.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the entire gulf coast was embroiled in a struggle over what constituted “appropriate” rebuilding and redevelopment efforts. This practicum engaged students in a set of working groups designed to assist local community based institutions and people in shaping the policy and practices that guided the redevelopment and rebuilding efforts in the city of New Orleans. The client group for the practicum was a collection of local and national organizations. The course was organized around thematic topics that corresponded with three work areas identified by the client group.

These were housing (reconstruction), workforce, and the environment.

The Katrina Practicum brought together faculty from three areas of expertise - housing, environment, and reflective practice to guide students through a hands-on learning process in which they helped the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans address issues of rebuilding postHurricane Katrina, specifically around housing

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and environmental rehabilitation. The course was loosely broken into four parts: Background Research and problem definition, problem refinement and charrette planning, charettes, and the additional research and production of the final product. During this time students met with community representatives visiting the class, and contacted additional representatives via phone and email in order to conduct research and get feedback on their work. A 10-day site visit was been scheduled to allow students to develop stronger relationships with their client, present their research and facilitate a discussion between the two client groups about their projects.

In addition to the main project work, students were asked to reflect on the issues of race and class that Katrina exposed. The Tremé neighborhood was a historically poor, black area in New Orleans.

It was once the site of an important industrial area along a canal that has since closed. During the 1960’s and 1970’s it was torn apart by urban renewal when a highway was sited through its

center. Yet, the neighborhood had maintained a strong identity and character within the city. As students began to engage with residents, and experience first-hand the extent of Katrina’s devastation, and observe the inequities in recovery efforts, they were asked to perform exercises to help them process this experience and learn from it, but most importantly how to better serve the public as planners.

While the case study area were in Mexico, the techniques covered were general and suitable almost any area where GIS data can be obtained or created. Each student was given the opportunity to focus on a type of land use change of personal interest. In contrast to more analytically-oriented GIS courses, there was also significant time to develop proscriptive proposals or design explorations, and to test and discuss new technologies for the visual representation of land use change.

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“People who historically have had limited housing choices in suburban areas are projected to make up 85% of new preferences for urban living, and need protection from the ever-increasing natural and environmental challenges of 21st century.”

“Archaic zoning ordinances are being thoroughly overhauled to permit higher density, mixed-use development, especially near new transit stations.”

Long Island Coast Mary Anne Ocampo, Stephen Gray Site Planning is the process of analyzing and understanding the cultural, natural, and morphological characteristics of a place and translating this comprehensive profile into meaningful design and development proposals. It is an inherently iterative process that involves shifting between regional, city, district, and localized scales in order to appropriately respond to the various environmental, economic, political, and social forces at play.

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In 2014, this studio explored strategies for the resilient retrofit of the Nassau County communities of the Massapequas on South Shore Long Island in the aftermath of Super Storm Sandy.

Students focused on the area directly southeast of Levittown as a prototype for rethinking the existing organizational patterns of a densely developed suburban community that will continue to experience the destructive impacts of nature, into a community that is more economically, socially and environmentally resilient. Building on extensive area studies, including the ongoing New York Rising area plan for the Massapequas coordinated by New York State, the studio developed urban design proposals that purposefully negotiated between the need for visionary and large-scale solutions, and the more pragmatic demands related to local stakeholder concerns.

Students conducted resiliency research and analysis, illustrating the circumstances leading up to Super Storm Sandy, assessing post-Sandy conditions, and identifying opportunities for resilient retrofit. The objective of the first phase was to create a comprehensive analytical profile for the Massapequas at three scales: the megaregion (New York City and Long Island), the town (Massapequa communities) and the district (centers, edges and intra-community connections).

Proposals required students to contemplate the viability of a homogenous morphology, the relationship of development to water, and the unmet potential that the Long Island Rail Road presents by a less than one hour commute to Penn Station. Working in pairs, and drawing from initial analysis, students developed physical district scale design proposals. They worked within one of three contexts (centers, edges or intra-community connections) and explored design approaches to resilient retrofit by taking one of three theoretical urban design attitudes—ReNewed Urbanism, Landscape Urbanism, or Tactical Urbanism.

Cultural and natural systems were analyzed and interwoven in an effort to creatively explore new forms of urbanity that increase resiliency in suburban coastal communities. Students assembled and applied an urban design and resiliency toolkit that responded to the impacts of Super Storm Sandy, anticipated future storm events, and aimed to achieve long-term economic and social sustainability by more flexibly responding to the diverse demands of the region as a whole.

The goal of the course was to help students gain an understanding of and experience in applying the methods and strategies for housing and economic development, physical and cultural infrastructures, and flood responsive landscapes.

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“Unique destinations draw people to the waterfront and improved paths make getting there an enjoyable experience in and of itself.”

“Current circulation patterns around the Macombs Dam Bridge are complicated and unintuitive for pedestrians and drivers alike. Through a series of targeted improvements, this tangle of abandoned paths can become part of a larger greenway.”

Bronx Waterfront Eran Ben-Joseph Meandering along the west side of the Bronx, New York, the Harlem River was formed 18,000 years age by the Laurentide Ice Sheet.

More than fifty percent of all Bronx residents are not citizens, and the borough is home to vibrant West African, South American, and Caribbean communities.

The Bronx has the lowest home ownership rate of New York’s five boroughs, at less than 20 percent. For nearly half of all residents, rent consumes over one quarter of their income.

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Opened in 1973, Roberto Clemente State Park along the river welcomes over one million visitors a year. Mill Pond Park opened in 2009 and has been highly successful in its years of operation. Both parks have indoor and outdoor recreation facilities that keep them active year-round.

While one third of Bronx land is parkland, the neighborhoods along the Harlem River have some of the worst access to parkland in the five boroughs.

In 2011, the Site and Environmental Systems Planning class examined future possibilities for the Bronx side of the Harlem River Waterfront. Each year, the course investigates and makes proposals about current planning and city design issues in urban and rural settings. The masterplan developed by the students focused on the four sites along the waterfront they believe have the greatest potential— the High Bridge, Macombs Dam, Pier Five, and Lincoln Avenue—examining how different themes can be used to highlight the natural and historical assets into a more active and engaging waterfront.

Getting people to the water is at the very core of the project. Providing access means developing existing and new routes between neighborhoods and the river. Paths can be improved in terms of connectivity, safety, maintenance, and comfort.

Infrastructure can be reconceptualized as a community asset, and student proposals included innovative lighting under and around bridges, tunnels, and highways; layering in new water cleaning machinery; and rethinking the role of parking lots.

They believed activity on the waterfront could be catalyzed by encouraging residents to embrace the Harlem River as part of their neighborhood, rather than viewing the water as a dividing line between boroughs.

The proposal built on the momentum of the High Bridge restoration with suggestions of further infrastructure and path improvements and temporary activations to bring attention to this historic bridge. The proposal for their redevelopment included infrastructure adaptation

through semi-permanent activations and expanded public access to the water’s edge. Meanwhile, a spectrum of structured and natural recreation areas could be developed along the Harlem River near Pier 5. The site has a particular focus on environmental restoration, but also improves waterfront access and provides opportunities for temporary activation. The terminus of Lincoln Avenue at the Harlem River edge provides an opportunity for environmental remediation while also making an area that has been dominated by industrial infrastructure accessible to people.

Through targeted investments in each of the four locations, the implementation of this plan would allow the Bronx to enjoy an expansion of and compliment to the existing open spaces and activity along the Harlem River. If implemented, this project would enable the riverbank to shine as a historic, natural, and cultural jewel in one of New York’s most diverse and engaging boroughs.

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“How can Lincoln adapt to increasing growth as it upgrades manufacturing sector employment and attract industries with new forms of economic production?”

“How can Lincoln accommodate the increased material flows that accompany global trade without overwhelming infrastructure?”

Lincolnopolis Alan Berger, Alexander D’hooghe Lincoln’s population is expected to increase by 65% between 2000 and 2040, bringing the population to 431,000 people.

In only the last 25 years, the total area of developed land in the United States grew to over 110 million acres, a net increase of 57 percent.

Land conversions attribute most significantly to losses in cropland, forestland, rangeland and pasture, diminishing the capacity of our land as a food resource. This is especially important in the peri-urban realm as 58 percent of total U.S. agricultural production comes from areas classified as metropolitan.

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The majority of new housing construction is occurring at the city’s outer-edge and is marketed towards the city’s upper middle classes, with only 320 units of public housing.

Students in this studio looked critically at the challenges facing Lincoln, Nebraska, identifying several that, while not receiving much attention today, will need to be considered going forward.

They firstly explored historic and projected urban growth in Lincoln, Nebraska, which displays a uniform and concentric pattern of sprawl and continues to invade and diminish conservation land, streams, lakes, important soils, ecological networks, and agricultural sustainability. The negative connotations of land development are due to a lack of healthy guidelines and regulation standards that should be in place to benefit the environment. In an effort to combat against food and ecological resource losses, students attempted to provide a new framework for development, based on the conservation and preservation of prime farmland and open space networks.

They recognized that given current state-wide and nationwide demographic trends, the primary source of growth will come from immigrants and migrant workers, who are attracted by employment opportunities available in Lincoln where there is a high demand for labour in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors.

Unfortunately, the current housing stock in Lincoln is ill-equipped for this influx of population.

The majority of immigrants coming to Nebraska are laborers with low levels of education, high levels of poverty and are concentrated in low income occupations. The labor is vital to the city’s economy as immigrants take jobs that local residents do not want, such as those in the meatpacking industry. Yet, immigration and the housing demands it will place on the city are not addressed in the city’s 2040 plan, or in current housing development projects. Students argued this must be considered going forward.

Lastly, as a mid-size Midwestern city, Lincoln does not have significant traffic congestion, but under current land-use scenarios is expected to develop congestion towards the southern parts of the city where most new growth is happening.

This will be driven by both residential development and industrial development taking advantage of Lincoln’s ideal location just two days from almost anywhere in the country. Students designed plans to redirect growth in the area towards towns strategically located near highways to help avoid this problem, while providing an opportunity to create a community that serves people at both the human and automobile scales.

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Crowdsource City Sarah Williams According to Wikipedia (arguably the most successful application of the term itself), Crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing, i.e. subcontracting, to the crowd. Crowdsourcing presents an alternative opportunity where participation is not bound by time and location.

Depending on how it is used, crowdsourcing can collect data, create community, solve problems, gather knowledge, help people in a crisis, or answer questions. From checking for a bus to helping to spread the word of the Arab Spring, technology is allowing citizens to participate in their community in fascinating new ways, and planners can use this newfound potential to solicit and spread information.

Crowdsourcing takes a different shape in every context where it’s been used: marketing, advocacy, social networking, or crisis management. In 2013, students set out to explore how crowdsourcing could be applied in planning.

Students investigated the use of social media and digital technologies for planning and advocacy by working with actual organizations to develop, implement, and evaluate prototype digital tools.

Students used the development of their digital tools as a way to investigate new media technologies.

Through applied study, they gained a solid background in how social media and crowdsourcing are currently being used for city planning, helped planning organizations use the information they collect to advocate for their needs, and prototyped and implemented actual mobile media strategies.

Working with client organizations, students determined the best method to use social media and technology to accomplish stated goals. Each team developed and implemented a collection strategy, and assisted the partner organizations in interpreting the results.

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For example, after meeting with Transportation Alternatives, volunteer committees, and active members in the cycling community, it became evident that the project would take the form of an interactive, online map to which people could add data via the website, smart phone, and text messaging. The goal was to get community members to submit photos, videos or written stories about their experiences on the streets of New York with the final product being a multimedia database that could ultimately be used for advocacy projects.

“Students used poster campaigns to solicit feedback via text messaging from the community about potential uses for vacant storefronts, while encouraging users to learn about the history of the sites.�

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WATER, LANDSCAPE, AND URBAN DESIGN Anne Whiston Spirn, James Wescoat The goals for the workshop are: 1. To provide a systematic introduction to the rapidly growing field of water-conserving urban design, with an emphasis on landscape innovations.

2. To cultivate an understanding of the growing role of stormwater management in urban landscape design, which includes combined sewer overflows, best management practices for storm water management, and strategic planning for sustainable community development.

3. To situate urban stormwater design within an ecological perspective that encompasses climate, geology, soil, and plant and animal communities.

4. To study the historical geography of design innovations in different regions of the world as a way to generate and evaluate design alternatives.

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Water affects the design of every building, site, and city in aesthetic, functional, and symbolic ways. In 2010, students examined issues of water-conserving design in different regions of the world, with a focus on the U.S. and South Asia; then, working with local partners, they applied what they’d learned to focus on West Philadelphia’s ultra-urban Mill Creek watershed, in light of the Philadelphia Water Departments landmark proposal to reduce combined sewer overflows through green infrastructure.

Students explored creative water-conserving design, ranging from rooftop rainwater harvesting to constructed wetlands and riparian buffers. Their efforts emphasized rainwater infiltration through porous paving, rain gardens, bioswales, soil aeration, engineered soils, and the like. The class proceeded to develop ways to adopt these methods to reduce drainage infrastructure, combined sewer overflows, and flood peaks from certain types of storms, as well as pollutant loading.

Clean Water Act regulations to improve water quality have driven increasingly creative and sustainable stormwater design initiatives throughout the US, which have generated a range of “Best Management Practices” and their incorporation in so-called “Low Impact Development.” Several cities, including Philadelphia, Seattle, and Portland (Oregon),

have developed innovative programs to improve water quality through the redesign of the urban landscape as a “green infrastructure” designed to manage storm water runoff.

Philadelphia, like most older US cities, has a combined sanitary and storm sewer system, which overflows into rivers and streams when runoff from heavy rainfall enters sewers, producing a flow that exceeds the capacity of sewage treatment plants. Prior to the class, the

Philadelphia Water Department announced a landmark proposal to reduce combined sewer overflows through green infrastructure. Moving from this point, the class explored the potential for this approach to reduce 30-50% of runoff from impervious surfaces in the Mill Creek Watershed, which drains about two-thirds of West Philadelphia. The class employed data from the Philadelphia Water Department and built on 23 years of work of Professor Spirn’s West Philadelphia Landscape Project.

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Even though it is an intensely polluted environment, the sea has become home to a wide variety of bird populations that stop over at the sea during their migration cycle.

Salton Sea Alan BergeR, ALEXANDER D’HOOGHE The Salton Sea is a shallow, saline, endorheic rift lake located directly on the San Andreas Fault, predominantly in California’s Imperial and Coachella valleys.

With an estimated surface area of 343 square miles, the Salton Sea is the largest lake in California.

By the 1960s, the salinity of the Salton Sea was rising, jeopardizing some of the species in it. It has a salinity exceeding 5.0% w/v (saltier than seawater), and most species of fish can no longer survive there.

By 2014, large swaths of lake bed were exposed due to mandated water transfers to metropolitan areas. Besides fish kills, the smaller lake interrupts bird migration and affects local tourism.

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In 2012, students at MIT took on the challenge to rethink this landscape. The class used rapidly expanding design and technological tools that enabled new readings of landscape systems, and the flows and forces that shape the world, to create projects that were consonant with the deep context of a place, as opposed to superficial cosmetic design.

The semester began with an in-depth exploration of the agriculture, water, waste pollution, ecology, infrastructure, and culture around the Salton Sea. From there, students took a field visit to the site, and created group projects around water ecology and energy ladder urbanism. The energy ladder is based on the idea that solid fuels produce dramatically less heat for the amount of fuel consumed and produce dramatically more pollution; when humans use more efficient fuels, they generate less pollution.

Students therefore explored how to move cities around the Salton Sea up the energy ladder. Recognizing that the Salton Sea is a dying ecosystem created by human error, water politics, and environmental mismanagement, some projects radicalized the current condition by exploiting to its maximum the economic possibilities. Industrial, agricultural and energy production were considered forms to be integrated into the urban systems. One project seized upon the region’s rich potential for energy development to encourage new forms of urbanism by exploiting the aesthetics of agriculture and energy.

This project proposed a large-scale date-farm landscape that would connect Niland and Calipatra, two isolated cities within the site, while bridging agricultural land, geothermal sites, and evaporation ponds.

Other projects considered the potential of breaking up the Salton Sea. Students argued one sea can no longer support the needs of the surrounding populations, industries, and habitats. In the past, the sea connected the local ecologies and economies, but current pressures have meant this is no longer sustainable. As such, it was suggested it is time to create a series of smaller, cleaner Salton Seas: a dual landscape in which water filtration systems and water recreation coexisted.

Value would be created at the edge.

For the north, this value would be in the form of recreation tourism and real estate development opportunities.

For the south, this value can be found in fostering fragile ecosystems and supporting the agricultural economies. By splitting the sea, according to inflow quality and end users in mind, the Sea no longer needs to satisfy all and is allowed to be a recreational and real estate amenity for people in the north and a habitat and production landscape for nature in the south. While these types of

projects are admittedly complex and intense, students believed this kind of large-scale thinking was what is necessary to ensure this unique and engaging ecosystem can survive through the 21st century.

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“Proposals adhere to five overarching themes as they relate to resiliency: Districting, Heterogeneity, Productivity, Autonomy, and Experimentation/Flexibility.”

Coding Resilient Urbanism in South Florida ALAN BERGER, ADELE NAUDE SANTOS, FADI MASOUD $152 billion worth of property is projected to be below sea level by 2030.

Florida is the nation’s third most-populous state, with six of the nation’s fastest growing metro areas located there.

With nearly 20 million residents, Florida is one of the country’s fastest growing states. Its ubiquitous suburban landscape is enabled by the continued manipulation of a dynamic estuarine environment and a pervasive real-estatedriven housing pattern. Thirty-five miles of levees and 2,000 hydraulic pumping stations drain 860 acres of water per day, resulting in the ‘world’s largest wet subdivision’ and putting $101 billion worth of property below sea level by 2030. The overall structure that defines Florida’s cities emerges from the combination of hard infrastructural lines, developer driven master plans, powerful reductive normative zoning, and rigid form-based codes. Taken together, they dictate everything from the use of the land, to its subdivision patterns, and from building heights, setbacks, densities, street widths, and open space ratios, all the way to roof pitch angles, and fence hues.

These conventional tools have proven marginally effective in dealing with the increased vulnerability caused by Florida’s inherently dynamic environmental forces. Tidal flows, severe weather events, rising sea levels, and the hyper-speed nature of living matter, all make for a constantly fluctuating environment. This renders the traditional static “objectbased codification,” which has defined much of contemporary urban design, inadequate and in urgent need of innovation.

By recognizing that it is exactly in the process of physical planning and design that we may be the most operative and strategic agents, students in the Urban Design Studio used urban design tools to deal with issues of 21st century urbanism.

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“Armed with an understanding of the broader systems at play, existing codification systems, planning policies, and relevant precedents, students made multi-scalar designs for selected sites that accepted its condition as a place that is neither wet nor dry but always shifting.”

Several counties in South Florida began a review of their comprehensive physical planning documents since executing the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact in 2010. Accordingly, Palm Beach and Broward Counties (north of Miami) served as the class’s clients. Two sites of further exploration – Pond Apple Slough near Fort Lauderdale’s Airport and Loxahatchee Groves at the peri-urban western frontier of Palm Beach – are representative of a range of urban, suburban, agricultural, infrastructural, and ecological, variations of Florida’s urbanization.

Through the design process, students devised a set of unique resiliency zoning, codes, land uses, programs, and typologies that were empirical and precise, yet dynamic, flexible, and responsive.

These new codes and designs were collected in a compendium of urban design guidelines, provided to the clients as they reconsider their policy documents. By incorporating the indeterminacy of the shifting broader environmental systems, with the pervasiveness and exactitude of planning code, we establish an opportunity for the instrumentality of policy to be a part of the design process and a progeny of it.

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Providence 2005 Michael Dennis, Greg Morrow The Providence studio explored the interface between architecture and urban design through projects that focused on the design of housing and public space in Providence, Rhode Island. It had undergone a radical transformation from a city with little economic base to a city that grew around its vibrant arts and culture community and has for this reason, been called the “Renaissance City.”

Despite successes, Providence was unable to attract residents to its downtown to any great extent, and this lack of a stable residential downtown population had stalled the city’s growth.

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The students focused on three districts – Capitol Hill, Downcity, and the Jewelry District. College Hill another district, which was separated from these three districts by the Providence River, was held together by the presence of Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design. As a consequence, the river had been transformed into a connecting public realm between College Hill and Downcity. This effort had revived the areas along the riverfront but had lacked development deep into the heart of the city.

The studio not only focused on housing, it operated on the premise that public spaces are important to the livability of a city, especially a city like Providence whose economic base is arts and culture. The public realm quite provides the platform for its arts and culture to exist and adds to the desirability of its inhabitants. Housing design is necessary not only to bring people, but also to give shape to the public spaces of the city. We explored both, in the hopes of helping Providence continue its renaissance.

Providence’s last official plan covered the years 2000-2005. As the end of its scope neared, it was time to re-examine the city’s downtown development in anticipation of the new building cycle in conjunction with the drafting of the next official plan. The students worked with the City of Providence, local housing agencies such as the Providence Neighborhood Housing Corporation, and local community interests and developers to understand the needs and demands for urban housing in downtown Providence.

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“Rather than proposing specific uses for the lots we have surveyed, we would like to provide criteria for determining redevelopment projects so that these maps can be a resource for negotiation and collaboration.”

Santurce Puerto Rico Susan Silberberg, Xavier Briggs 45% of residents in Santurce live below the poverty line and incomes have fallen over the past 15 years.

There are over 7,000 fewer occupied housing units in Santurce today than there were in 2000, down from 39,521 through the physical decay of abandoned buildings.

34% of households are significantly burdened by housing costs, and new families looking to purchase homes have few affordable options.

The Ciudadela complex built on Avenida Ponce De Leon led to the removal of the historic San Mateo neighborhood and the displacement of 120 families and businesses in 2003-2005.

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By supporting existing initiatives, no matter how small, the students believed they would help build community capacity for larger and more sustained efforts and enhance the community’s ability to effectively partner with non-profit, public, and private stakeholders and supporters. Furthermore, they focused on projects that promoted collaboration between stakeholders in Santurce. The areas they felt were relevant included the community engagement framework, vacant land, creative economy, arts and culture, and the organizational structure for ImagineSanturce. By building trust, creating norms of cooperation and sharing and encouraging entrepreneurism and creativity within these four areas, the student projects laid the groundwork for future collaborations and a culture of cooperative community development.

Transformation through collaboration was a key principle at the Foundation for Puerto Rico, and it had sought university collaboration since its inception. One such university collaboration incorporated the School of Architecture + Planning and the University of Puerto Rico, focused on the Barrio of Santurce in San Juan. When the Foundation decided to make its new home in Santurce, it sponsored a placemaking workshop in the district to explore ways to create change at the micro-scale – using Santurce as a pilot project for a larger, island-wide effort. The MIT project was a part of this initiative.

The class selected the project focus areas through a process of fieldwork and observation, stakeholder interviews, and analysis of existing data. In the role of “friendly outsider,” the class chose to forgo introducing new projects and initiatives to the Imagine Santurce process. Instead, the class focused on the perceived need to inform the nascent placemaking efforts and support existing initiatives by prioritizing projects that already had the support and/or interest of community members and, in some cases, were already under way in some form.

In doing so, they hoped to make the planning framework useful to stakeholders in the short term as a resource to aid their work rather than provide an unattainable vision for the future.

“Fractured ownership is an obstacle to parcel aggregation and requires stakeholders take a flexible approach that emphasizes negotiation and mutually beneficial deal-making.”

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Brazil: Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Canada: Toronto, Wood Buffalo Chile: Santiago China: Beijing, Foshan, Gaoming, Hong Kong,

Jinan, Shantou, Shandong, Shenzhen, Taiyuan, Tianjin Colombia: Bello, Bogotá, Cartagena, Medellín Denmark: Copenhagen Ecuador: Quito France: Paris Greece: Thessaloniki India: Delhi, Gujarat, Mumbai, Paliyad, Pune Israel: Kiryat Gat Italy: Bolzano, Florence Japan: Tama Kenya: Nairobi Malaysia: Johor Bahru, Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya,

George Town, Kuching Mexico: Cabo San Lucas, Mexico City Morocco: Ben Guerir Mozambique: Maputo Netherlands: Amsterdam Philippines: Manila Russia: Moscow Singapore Slovakia: Bratislava South Africa: Cape Town, Durban Spain: Bilbao, Madrid, Zaragoza

Global Studios & Workshops

“Along the lines of the client brief, the seven students who participated in the Rio de Janeiro workshop developed a series of adaptive systems that point to new opportunities for mobility in Rio.”

“Our project calls for communication between the user and the city.

To sense and show the effect of individual decisions, visualizations illustrate how much time, money and carbon the user saved.”

Digital Cities Carlo Ratti, Dennis Frenchman, Assaf Biderman Locations we have worked in: Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Ben Guerir, Morocco; Bolzano, Italy; Cape Town, South Africa; Copenhagen, Denmark; Dallas, Texas, USA; Madrid, Spain; Medellin, Colombia; Moscow, Russia; Paris, France; Pune, India; Quito, Ecuador; Rio de Janiero, Brazil; Thessaloniki, Greece; Wood Buffalo, Canada

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The mandate of the SENSEable City Lab Digital Cities Workshop is to use technology in innovative ways to overcome the social, urban, and economic challeneges facing client cities.

Students begin class the class by engaging with the cities in various ways. In Cape Town, students took to the streets with residents on early morning buses, minibuses, trains and cars, spoke with the residents of the townships, and met with many of the planners envisioning the future of local mobility. These experiences reinforced the imperative for better, safer, and more convenient transportation options.

In Madrid, students toured many facilities and saw urban services firsthand: the M-30, a heavily-used, partly underground expressway closely monitored by sensors and cameras; street cleaning vehicles operating on Madrid streets; and the management of the Paruq Juan Carlos I, a huge municipal park entirely managed

by Ferrovial Servicios, with responsibilities including planting, trimming, cleaning, and monitoring all the park’s living systems.

When it came to solutions, student proposals were bold and engaging. Regarding energy in Paris, some envisioned a scheme for households to align their electricity usage towards off peak hours in a “micro smart grid” system.

Custom wireless metering sensors would help users understand their own behavior, ally with neighbors on complementary patterns, and automate their device usage to avoid peak demand consumption. Another proposal used anaerobic digesters to convert organic waste into electricity, and would also leverage technology and the public transit card network to reward citizens for sustaibable behavior.

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The UN estimates China will need to build new cities accommodating over 350 million people in the next 20 years.

In 2010, the studio took on a research agenda, becoming a testing-ground for Clean Energy Urban Design. The research is founded on an understanding of energy consumption in neighborhoods based on human behavior. Data came from analysis of how thousands of families live and consume energy in different urban forms, ranging from conventional street grids to “towersin-the-park” type projects. From this data, the research team constructed an online, rapid energy assessment tool: the Energy Proforma, which allows designers and developers to estimate the comprehensive energy performance of a project

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Energy consumption that can be attributed to the built environment and the life of people within it has exceeded 46% of the total energy consumed in China.

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Producing its energy largely from fossil fuels, China has already become the largest carbon emitter in the world.

Urban development is regarded as the most important driver in the emissions scenario.

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Dennis Frenchman, Chris Zegras

The Chinese urban landscape is being dramatically transformed through rapid urbanization, changing standards of living, and massive new infrastructure projects. These changes are inducing cities to consume ever more energy in the face of decreasing supplies. While there are numerous studies of energy utilization at the building and metropolitan scales, relatively little work has been done at the scale of neighborhoods, districts, and real estate projects, which are the fundamental building blocks of urban growth. The purpose of this project is to fill in this missing gap in research by creating tools for designers, developers, and policy-makers to use in creating more energy efficient projects.

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Clean Energy City

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“The goal is not to develop a city form and repeat it endlessly, but to guide design and development decisions towards neighborhood designs that may be highly diverse but are relatively more efficient than would otherwise be produced.”

before it is built, or policymakers and researchers to compare existing projects using a common platform and standard measures.

designers and researchers to be proactive in the creative process of making clean energy environments, while also encouraging innovation.

The Proforma has been extensively tested and refined in practice through academic studios and workshops. The MIT—Tsinghua Joint Urban Design Studio has developed innovative clean energy neighborhood designs using the Proforma in demonstration cities of Jinan and Taiyuan China. The research team observed the potentially profound impact that the Energy Proforma can have on practice and pedagogy. The presence of an agile, comprehensive tool empowers students,

The Proforma offers a potential means to establish a standard for energy performance of urban development projects, without prescribing a design model repeated endlessly across the landscape. Ultimately, we envision that the approach could lead to the adoption of the first national neighborhood energy standard in China, which we hope will pave the way for making clean energy cities in countries around the world.

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“With night markets, large sidewalks and a variety of business throughout downtown, many elements of a rich and lively city are already contained within Gaoming.

The question is how to enhance it as Gaoming expands.”

“Housing development should concentrate along transit while integrating residential and commercial uses to create a vibrant, livable city. Existing villages should be integrated into the new urban fabric to preserve cultural relevancy and allow residents to transition peacefully from the old to the new.”

Housing in China

The Chinese government has set out to construct a national highway system longer than that of the United States by 2035.

Tunney Lee, randall imai, Yang Liu, andres sevtsuk, chenghui weng, liang zhao

Locations we have worked in: Gaoming, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Shantou, Shenzhen, and Tianjin.

China has 60 cities with a population of one million or more, and by 2030 experts believe that number will reach 220, including 24 megacities of over five million inhabitants.

Starting in the fall of 2005, MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning offered a series of studios and research seminars on sustainable residential development in China, with help from a number of local sponsors. The studio’s goals addressed sustainable neighborhood and related environmental, social, and economic issues expected to emerge over the next twenty years. Students undertook extensive research on selected topics and tested them through hypothetical re-planning of an existing project.

Chinese citizens are currently turning to private automobiles, making China the second-largest automobile market behind the United States.

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Research courses focused on the development of guiding principles with respect to community facilities (including open space), site systems, and building systems. An examination of future trends in China gave the students a sense of the context within which these principles would be applied. Studios applied the values of economic, environmental, and equitable sustainability to sites in different stages of urban development.

The final proposals focus on a diversity of shortand long-term tools that could provide balanced development. Some classes, for example, endorsed a new Jade Necklace of parks, streams and trails that would rehabilitate the ecological health of the watershed by restoring drainage patterns and functional hydrology.

Others envisioned new housing projects concentrating high- and medium-density development along transit lines while integrating residential and commercial uses to create a vibrant, livable city. Here, existing villages would be integrated into the new urban fabric to preserve cultural relevancy and allow residents to transition peacefully from the old to the new. Provided to the clients, the students’ goal was to see their work used as a guideline for growth not only in the specific regions of study, but more broadly across China as it struggles to find a balance between meeting the needs of residents and those of the environment through its urbanization programs.

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“The studio allowed us to tackle contemporary issues of urbanization, sustainability, ecology, and community.

Multi-disiplinary teams brought together students with diverse skill sets and created a rich learning environment.”

Beijing Urban Design Dennis Frenchman, jan wampler, Zhang Zhao, Shao Lei The goal of the studio is to foster international cooperation through the undertaking of a joint urban design and planning initiative in the city of Beijing involving important, often controversial, sites and projects.

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The Beijing Urban Design Studio is a pioneering design and educational program launched in 1985 as a collaboration between Tsinghua University (THU) and MIT. The studio was the first of its kind in China, bringing together students and faculty from planning, architecture, urban design, and real estate to engage difficult urban development issues in the nation’s capital city. After 30 years, the Beijing Studio is recognized as “the most successful and enduring international exchange program in China.” It received MIT’s Irwin Sizer Award for Innovation in Education, and the work has been published in World Architecture, and numerous books and articles.

Although the studio is particular to China, it provides a model for many cities around the world undergoing rapid urbanization. Over its life, the studio has studied the spectrum of critical urban issues facing the transformation of cities like Beijing from traditional hutongs and courtyard houses into 21st century, high-rise megacities. Each studio session confronts this transformation in a different setting and circumstance: neighborhoods, religious sites, commercial districts, factory districts, suburban locations, streets, and landmarks.

The program includes a month in residence on the THU campus in Beijing, preceded by a study tour of sites and projects that inform the work.

Interdisciplinary teams, mixing students from participating universities, develop proposals with input from city officials, residents, developers, and stakeholders. In the process, the teams encounter a wide range of problems, from preservation of cultural heritage to displacement of poor communities, housing the floating population, sustainability, segregation of the city by roads and transit, and the need for high density yet humanely scaled neighborhoods.

In 2014, Cambridge University (UK), the Technical University of Munich, and Chongqing University, joined in the studio-research experience.

Over the years, the studio has inspired changes that can be seen in the landscape of Beijing. However, its most significant product has been the hundreds of students and faculty alumni now working in cities across China and the world.

In 2010, the studio took on a research agenda, becoming a testing-ground for Clean Energy Urban Design. The students helped to develop new design tools, such as the MIT Energy Proforma, which enables developers and designers to predict the comprehensive energy performance of neighborhoods before they are built. Applying the Proforma in practice, the students designed new low-carbon projects and retrofits in Jinan and Taiyuan, China.

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Landscape Heritage Conservation Jim Wescoat Landscape is a powerful concept in design, planning, and geographic inquiry.

Landscape and urban heritage inquiry goes beyond monuments and combines exploration of conservation theory and practice with evaluation of active urban environmental design projects. Landscape planning critically examines the changing historical concepts and historiography of landscapes, gardens, and associated ideas about space and place. It surveys the varieties of landscape inquiry— from cultural geography to landscape architecture and landscape science.

This design workshop and planning practicum introduced students to the field of landscape heritage conservation. Landscape heritage encompasses natural and cultural dimensions of place, frequently charged with environmental problems and cultural tensions. It entails multiple methods of inquiry and associated challenges of synthesis, analogy, and judgment.

During their fieldwork in India, the students met with faculty and graduate students at the Architectural Conservation Department at the School of Planning and Architecture and the Conservation Department of the Archaeological Survey of India. They also took short trips to conservation projects in sites including Agra, Fathpur Sikri, Jodhpur, and Nagaur for comparison with their own work.

“Landscape and urban heritage inquiry goes beyond monuments and combines study of conservation theory and practice with exploration of active urban environmental design projects.”

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Collaboration with local organizations took different forms and changed in response to community concerns. When the students met villagers in summer 2013 as part of a larger MIT Tata Community Water Systems study, for example, three independent participatory rural appraisal groups mentioned their desire to pursue a more holistic landscape approach to community water planning.

More specifically, they expressed interest in landscape design ideas for an intermittent nallah that runs along the village, which was depleted and degraded. AKPBSI invited the students to collaborate with their Rural Habitat Development Program toward finding a way to rehabilitate this water source, as they do not have landscape architects or planners on staff.

In regional terms, the classes assessed the encounters among Islamic, Indian, and EuroAmerican ideas and methods—from painting to maps, prints, photographs, and travel accounts.

They explored the ways in which and to what extent landscape synthesis was possible, asking how it informed landscape heritage conservation and what new intellectual challenges conservation posed for landscape research. Students were responsible for grappling with these questions through the lens of the burgeoning field of landscape heritage conservation, in order to devise a holistic understanding of this shifting area of research.

“Theoretically, heritage conservation is charged with issues of cultural identity, conflict, and creativity. It entails multiple methods of inquiry and associated challenges of synthesis and judgment.”

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“To give meaning to slogans like ‘equitable,’ ‘just,’ or ‘inclusive’ cities, displaced people must be treated as humans and our practicum is part of that struggle.”

Displacement & Rehabilitation in India Balakrishnan RajagopaL, Miloon Kothari Questions the students sought to address: How can we help partners in collecting, aggregating, and disseminating data related to marginalized communities in Delhi?

How can the data-centered tools or strategies developed help them further their advocacy work and improve quality of life for residents of these communities?

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This practicum primarily focused on data visualizations as well as data collection and analysis strategies for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) advocating against the displacement of jhuggi jhopri clusters (informal settlements) in Delhi, India. An estimated 1-3 million people live in jhuggi jhopri (JJ) clusters, one major type of informal settlement in Delhi. Because of Delhi’s unique land tenure system, the majority of all residents live on public lands. However, for JJ residents in particular, many of whom are poor and/or recent migrants to the city, the government often uses the frame of illegality to delegitimize their tenure. Especially during periods of development or speculation, the government’s policy has often been to either forcibly displace or relocate residents to the outskirts of the city in order to redevelop the land beneath.

A research team of seven graduate students traveled to Delhi to work with local NGOs that advocate with and for JJ cluster residents. During the one-month engagement, the research team conducted site visits and interviews to better understand the issue of displacement as well as the data challenges that slum dwellers and advocacy organizations face in their work and compared the experience of Chennai, another major city.

“Displaced populations are largely invisible in Indian cities although there is much data about them. We tried to offer time series mapping and visualization of displaced communities in Delhi and the way Delhi has changed as seen through displacement. We also offered an assessment of the resettlement frameworks and displacement impacts in selected communities in Delhi and Chennai.”

Through the visualizations and recommendations offered, the research team sought to assist partner organizations in their advocacy efforts, build legitimacy for JJ cluster residents in the eyes of the government, and ultimately help prevent development-induced displacement and relocation of JJ clusters in Delhi.

The team conceptualized a collaborative online approach to both aggregate and disseminate information on JJ cluster evictions and resettlements, including relevant news, statistics, maps, personal stories, and legal cases.

The team conducted literature review, stakeholder interviews, and site visits; reviewed comparisons and existing spatial data with special focus on Chennai; identified key themes and gaps in displacement research and advocacy; and created visualizations and communications strategies to address gaps.

The outcomes included a detailed analytical report on displacement in Delhi, which produced a spatial and social mapping of displacement in Delhi during the last several decades, the impact of displacement on its morphology, and impact analyses of displaced communities. The report’s maps and visualizations directly contributed to a better understanding of the displacement and indicated new avenues and ways to generate policy and legal reform. The report’s findings were shared with government agencies such as the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board, NGOs, experts, and think tanks. The report also produced a network analysis of data flows among existing organizations and researchers, with a view to helping them improve data management and sharing.

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The government is one of the largest promoters of scavenging, employing sub-caste sanitation workers tasked maintaining sewerage systems in urban areas. Clearly, the State alone is incapable of eradicating manual scavenging.

Ending Manual Scavenging in Paliyad Balakrishnan Rajagopal Manual Scavenging, the manual cleaning, handling, and carrying of human excreta, is a pervasive practice in India, despite its detrimental implications for health and human rights.

Manual scavenging is performed exclusively by one sub‐caste of Dalits, also known as “Untouchables,” for whom it is often the sole economic opportunity.

The Gujarat-based Navsarjan Trust, has been working on the issue of manual scavenging for years. In 2006, they teamed up with students from MIT to help move the debate on manual scavenging from advocacy and legislation to enforcement and implementation. Navsarjan suggested undertaking a pilot project in one village in Gujarat, with the notion that if strategies for eliminating manual scavenging could be developed there, they could be spread and scaled-up to eliminate the practice across the country. For this exercise, Navsarjan selected Paliyad, a village in the state of Gujarat.

Here there were over 300 Dalit households here that had no access to sanitation facilities, and a total of 17 scavenger families responsible for collecting waste from latrines and open defecation sites.

In 2006, students from MIT and advocates from The Gujarat-based Navsarjan Trust, one of India’s leading advocacy groups, and members of the Paliyad scavenging community embarked on a collaborative effort to understand the situation of manual scavengers in Paliyad, design sustainable sanitation technology that eliminates the need for manual scavengers, and develop alternative employment strategies to improve

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In 2008, a second team of students from MIT traveled to Gujarat to evaluate the project’s status.

It was clear an advocacy intervention needed to be implemented in tandem with a sanitation intervention. The MIT students helped develop a number of strategies for addressing the issue, including reframing the problem as a right to sanitation and building an awareness raising campaign, targeted particularly at women.

They also advised Navsarjan to commit more staff, especially female staff, to work within the community build a broad based constituency in order to ensure the advocacy campaigns were able to reach a broader public.

the living and working conditions of members of the scavenging sub-caste. Based on their findings, the MIT team prepared a report for Navsarjan, analyzing the various dimensions of the manual scavenging problem in Paliyad and offering an Ecosan composting toilet model sanitation technology as a viable option to eliminate the need for manual scavenging in the first place.

Moreover, they made recommendations about the institutional and other arrangements needed to make this technology available.

Finally, the students suggested creating a demand for private toilets should be a priority, and offered a number of flexible options to mitigate the constraints of the local sanitation situation.

Sanitation is a pressing issue in many urban areas around the world, but the challenge of manual scavenging is an especially unpalatable one. It was hoped the students’ valuable research is used to end this practice not only in Paliyad, but across India.

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“Water is a key challenge to urban life, with almost a quarter of Mumbai’s drinking water trucked into the city. Our project questioned the existing water infrastructure, as well as the lack of green open space in the city and the lack of connection of the Island City to Navi Mumbai across the bay.”

“The abandoned land is developed as a mixed-use district, using the existing north-south rail rights-ofway as avenues that establish strong public space connections to the reconfigured waterfront.”

The Bay of Mumbai Alan Berger, Rahul Mehrotra Mumbai’s Metropolitan Region covers over 4,000 square kilometers and is home to over 22 million people.

With more than 90 percent of the mangrove edge cut down, Mumbai has just five kilometers of mangrove shoreline—wreaking havoc on microclimate stabilisation and flood protection.

6,475,000 people live in Mumbai’s informal settlements of ad hoc shacks, century-old chawls, and modern apartment towers.

Landmaking has increased the city’s area by 700 percent since 1700.

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Over the summers of 2008, and 2009, a multidisciplinary group of graduate students traveled to Mumbai for field research. The students immersed in a myriad site visits, used several modes of transportation, spent time in informal housing locations, and experienced local cultural events and cuisine.

Based on this exposure, the students conducted independent research on everything from health, mobility, environmental issues, to questions of governance, and urban planning policy.

The task, broadly defined, was to absorb and assimilate Mumbai’s various unique qualities and characteristics all the while thinking about the presence and meaning of the Bay in the culture and imagination of the city. The final design projects resulting from their research operated at a range of scales, but remained geographically centered on the Bay of Mumbai: the key component of the city’s ecological systems.

By scanning the urbanized territory and spatializing different kinds of flows, forces, data and information, research moved beyond the limitations of traditional urban spatial and visual analysis, taking into account and measuring the invisible and non-ocular forces shaping the city.

Mumbai is a fast-growing, fast-changing space, which points to the responsibility of architects, landscape architects, and planners to include an inherent unpredictability of regional-level dynamics into their design recommendations.

Any work of a sole designer or planner is not to originate a singular vision for the entire Metropolitan Region, but to imagine urban design scale interventions that can respond to both sitespecific conditions and regional-level trends and sequence these interventions; to determine which kinds of alterations to the city’s fabric can trigger socially inclusive and economically viable change at the regional-level, and transition those ideas into tangible, projects that can add up to a larger, more robust whole, over time.

As such, the work prepared by the students does not offer univalent prescriptions for the Mumbai region, but rather invokes ways of imagining and conceiving multiple options for urban and regional transformations.

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“Malaysia has experienced rapid urban growth and development over the last three decades. In city-centers, especially in Kuala Lumpur, a multitude of high-rises, highways and other types of urban infrastructure have re-shaped the local built environment.”

Urban Sustainability in Malaysia Lawrence Susskind, Dayna Cunningham, Gabriella Carolini, Miho Mazereeuw, balakrishnan Rajagopal, J. Phillip Thompson Malaysia has made rapid progress in moving from developing to developed country status, with the goal of being fully developed by 2020.

Malaysia has an intergovernmental planning system in place that lists sustainable development as one of its goals. It is a country that has made enormous strides in reducing poverty, providing high quality universal education, and offering publicly supported health care to all its citizens.

It has achieved global visibility for its commitment to become a low carbon society and to improve water and air quality, protect mangroves and fisheries and encourage historic preservation. It has been able to catalyze substantial private sector investment in housing and commercial development while maintaining its natural resource and agricultural base.

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The MIT-Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) Sustainable Cities Program (MSCP) is a five-year effort supported by the Malaysian government. It is aimed at improving the quality of instructional materials available to college and university faculty around the world that teach about sustainable city development.

The ten selected Visiting Scholars spent September to December, 2014, based at the Institute Sultan Iskandar of Urban Habitat and Highrise at UTM in Johor Bahru and then travelled to Cambridge from January to May, 2015, to complete their program in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

While at UTM, the Visiting Scholars conducted extensive field-based research related to their selected research agenda question(s). At MIT, they worked with MIT faculty and doctoral students to transform their research findings into online teaching packages that were distributed free-of-charge via MIT’s global educational media outlet. MCSP is a five-year program, running until May 2018.

“Understanding the way city dwellers use malls is important. It speaks to how government can promote economic opportunities while encouraging general interaction among citizens.”

Four rounds of Visiting Scholars will take part annually, building on an impressive body of research dedicated to understanding Malaysia sustainable cities.

Although some communities have seen positive changes including infrastructure upgrading and increased revenues, other areas have seen rapid commercialization and displacement.

The ongoing research will address a number of questions, for example, how does UNESCO status impact the preservation of “intangible” heritage in Malaysia? Gentrification or urban renewal, depending on how one views the process, in core areas of the UNESCO sites and an influx of tourism industries has changed these communities.

Although architectural renovation and preservation projects have successfully restored the aesthetics of the building stock in these areas, there has been a loss of cultural identity as boutique hotels, souvenir shops, and cafes have replaced local shops, family homes, and traditional restaurants.

There is a significant opportunity to examine the following areas/sub-questions such as, what has been the shift in land use and tenancy before and after UNESCO World Heritage classification; what programs are in place to maintain the intangible heritage of local communities and; what lessons can UNESCO and future heritage sites learn about preserving intangible heritage from the Malaysian case study?

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“The city is a collection of measurable elements, and the act of city design is in reality the act space of adjusting Customizable in Punggol these elements toward a new ideal.”

Parametric Urbanism in Singapore Brent D. Ryan, Andres Sevtsuk Urban design can increasingly be understood through the concept of “parameters”, or measurable, distinct variables whose change affects other variables within an open system of buildings, public spaces, and infrastructure.

Two urban design courses measured and then projected changes to two mixed-use and housing neighborhoods in Singapore in order to optimize performance along selected urban design variables. One area is dense and redeveloped with commercial buildings and tall social housing blocks from the 1960s and 70s, and the other is a state-ofthe-art new town with over 50,000 inhabitants and sixteen-story high apartment blocks.

Singapore’s high population density- around 30,000 people per square kilometer– demands new and evolving urban design typologies. Parametric urbanism seeks to provide a quantitative solution to contemporary design challenges.

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Today’s architects and urbanists increasingly design and understand the form of buildings and cities through the lens of the parameter. Broadly defined as a variable within a system whose change affects other aspects of that system, parameters, or “parametricism”, are controlling or inspiring the design of everything from facade details to large-scale developments.

City form, too, is composed of parameters at many scales, ranging from individual building features to elements like infrastructure and settlement patterns. In fact, one can imagine urban design less as the generation of city districts de novo than as the modification of existing urban elements in a purposeful manner.

Two urban design courses, a Spring 2013 workshop and Fall 2014 studio, provided a forum for investigating parametric urbanism, while the island nation and city of Singapore provided the site. As the world’s only independent city-state, Singapore is a particularly design and technology-oriented nation where urban design and planning are paramount elements in shaping the future. Singapore’s commitment to progressive urbanism makes it a particularly appropriate site for parametric investigations.

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Habraken’s theory to define the degree of hierarchy

The workshop and studio were undertaken in territorial depth at block level collaboration and withIncreasing the financial support Punggol / 31 of Professor Andres Sevtsuk of the Singapore University of Technology and Design, and of the SUTD-MIT International Design Center.

The 2013, the workshop examined Bugis, one of the most accessible districts in Singapore with tens of thousands of visitors every day, and Punggol, a new town with sixteen-story apartment blocks, multi-story car parks in the middle of each block, ample roof gardens on the garages. Bugis is economically and visually complex, shaped by thousands of inhabitants and businesses over time, while Punggol is new and planned, designed intentionally with tested block types and good public space ratios.

Students identified parameters that best captured the qualities of both areas. Variables were based on dimensions of the pedestrian network, public use of space, local perception of public spaces as proxy private space or vice versa, and other factors. Students then proposed a plan for design of vacant blocks in the new Bugis corridor, and identified opportunities in Punggol’s design parameters to enhance connectivity and malleability of spaces at different scales.

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In 2014, studio participants identified and improved individual variables in two existing public housing estates- Ang Mo Kio, built in the 1970s, and Punggol, still under construction- and then tested out ‘new build’ approaches in the Kallang river basin.

Students spent several days observing and measuring built environment variables of Ang Mo Kio and Punggol, then selected one or more urban design variables for improvement.

Design variables identified in Ang Mo Kio included children’s activities along school paths, biodiversity in open spaces, and a sense of well-being in public spaces. In Punggol, students selected the visibility of water, senses of orientation, open space activity diversity, and green space as variables for amplification.

Proposals for Kallang combined and recalibrated variables from the existing housing estates to generate a schematic, improved ‘new build’ public housing neighborhood.

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“We envision that communities of the future will have a more acute awareness of their impressions upon their surrounding habitats and natural systems.”

“Whether picking the orchards in our agriculture fields or walking along the boulevard, residents will be constantly surrounded by green spaces that serve fundamental purposes for Tama’s regional ecology.”

Tama New Town Eran Ben-Joseph, Andrew Scott,

Adele Naude Santos, Shun Kanda At first population will continue to grow, followed by a period of widespread overcrowding and social destabilization, and finally there will be a concerted effort to stabilize and reduce global population. Most immigrants, as well as the country’s youth, will move to the cities, causing a shift in the urban-rural equilibrium.

Energy will become more expensive, and long-distance commuting will decline. Lowtech tech travel will be more common. Transit Oriented Development will be the dominant model for designing new communities or transforming existing ones. Train stations will become important spatial nodes.

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Less energy will be used per person and be more heavily dependent on renewable sources. Local generation will be more common, though there will still be a mix of central and dispersed generation.

Attempts to meet energy efficiency targets will produce a dual response of mega-structures as well as localized eco-villages where suitable.

The Shoku to Tsunagaru Machi (Town Connected with Food) plan synthesized complementary models of community agriculture, passive climate mitigation, waste water and solid waste management to produce a community in which infrastructure systems were lightweight, local, and integrated with the natural flows on the site.

This book was the product of a long-term collaboration between Japan’s Sekisui House and MIT School of Architecture + Planning formed to envision, design, and build prototypical sustainable residential communities for society in the years 2030-2050. Using Tama New Town, Japan, as a reference, the project team conducted studies on sustainable community design and ideal residential housing from a global perspective in order to accumulate new insights and technical expertise that can be utilized in future business.

Critical to this effort was the “daylighting” of a stream that was covered over by a road running North-South in the center of the site, as well as the reforming of currently flat, ‘plateau conditions’ into a series of stepped slopes which share a central spine, draining water naturally through numerous small valleys. Housing densities/typologies vary throughout the site, increasing density on Southfacing slopes where microclimate conditions were optimal. The train station located in the Northern-most section of the site plan provided the necessary driver to support limited retail, as well as the opportunity to increase future housing densities.

The manual illustrated how stated explicit infrastructure objectives can be translated into design interventions in a variety of conditions and multiple scales. In addition to outlining techniques and intervention points, the manual also included few permutations of how these techniques could be synthesized and employed at the neighborhood scale.

Meanwhile, Bento Machi (Scalable Integrated Living Systems) was an experiment in modular design and the concept of ecological carrying capacity. Rather than begin with contemporary consumer preferences or typical density patterns, it was decided that a site should be able to treat and recycle its own water, provide its own energy, produce its own food, and support low-carbon transportation.

Students took a modular approach to define the ecological unit and provide a means by which the town can achieve flexibility by adding or subtracting blocks. Modules are self-contained units managing rainwater runoff, gray water, wastewater, energy, and food production.

The design and planning approach avoided standardized solutions, instead encouraging experimentation and above all, site responsiveness. Rather than providing a single plan, the purpose of the manual is to create a flexible set of codes that account for site variability.

It allowed users to determine intervention points through condition resolution. By focusing on broad principles rather than micro solutions, the hope was that this project could serve as a useful guideline on a global scale.

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Our time in the Philippines created so many unique opportunities for connecting with great organizations, understanding the strength of local communities, and imagining ways that MIT could support post-disaster relief and recovery”

Metro Manila MARY ANNE OCAMPO, Stephen Gray As the political, economic, and cultural center of the Philippines, Metro Manila accounts for almost 12% of the country’s total population with 12 million people.

Comprised of 16 cities and 1 municipality , Metro Manila generates nearly 40% of the country’s gross domestic product and 13% of the country’s total employment.

For the last four decades, flooding occurrences are increasing, and the estimated costs in damages and the number of people affected are increasing.

Flood impacts affect 3.4 million opeople and have caused $160 million USD in damages annually.

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Vulnerabilities to natural disasters have long been a part of Filipino history, shaping society, culture, and the physical environment. However, in 2013 Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda), the strongest tropical storm recorded at landfall in the Philippines, cost thousands of lives, displaced millions, and caused large-scale destruction, amplifying the urgent need for environmental and social resilience planning in the region. The environmental changes and increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters in the region are being further compounded by a combination of population growth and rapid ruralto-urban migration. In collaboration with the World Bank and the University of the Philippines, this MIT studio and practicum built upon the World Bank’s Citywide Development Approach to develop replicable resettlement and upgrade strategies for residents living along the lakeshore of Laguna de Bay in Muntinlupa City, located at the southern edge of the Metro Manila region.

Working within the context of one of the world’s most densely populated and largest megacities and taking on the realities of an increasingly vulnerable low-income urban population, the studio explored the following questions: How can Metro Manila be better prepared for future storm events? Where should future development and redevelopment occur and where should it not?

This was followed by a semester of research, analysis, and the development of planning and design proposals that explored approaches to reducing human vulnerability to flooding and climate change while addressing the socio-economic challenges of ISFs living in Muntinlupa City.

Through this process, four major themes emerged: Intelligent Infrastructure: Sharing Resources and Living Local, Environmental Zoning: Directing Settlement and Building Capatcity, Connect and Protect: Cleaning Water and Balancing Benefits, and Distinctly Filipino: Local Landmaking and Development.

How can integrated resettlement strategies for ISFs balance considerations for natural systems, city form, and socio-cultural dynamics? What are the benefits to public, private, and non-profit sector collaborations?

The studio kicked off with a two-week site visit that included extensive field observations, stakeholder interviews, community meetings, and design charrettes.

Studio recommendations and projects for Muntinlupa’s Citywide Development Approach were documented in a studio report for city officials, local NGOs, and the World Bank with the intent of providing new strategies for ISFs, flood mitigation, and urban development. The studio work was also presented at the Community Architects Network Regional Conference and Workshop in Intramuros and Muntinlupa City. The studio and practicum was a first step in an ongoing effort for engagement with various stakeholders in the larger metropolitan community.

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Slovakia, Urban to Rural JULIAN BEINART, JOHN DE MONCHAUX In 2006, the studio focused on an 800 hectare site just north-west of the edge of the city of Bratislava, that is likely to receive the larger share of Bratislava’s growth over the next two to three decades.

Two years later, the class focused on an area about 110 kilometers east of Bratislava, on a project site known as “Aqua Tethys.”

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In 2006, the selected site had a strategic location in respect to development and transportation initiatives occurring across the nearby border with Austria. The legacy of unique cadastral patterns and the relationship of any new development to the adjacent, and very large Volkswagen factory presented unusual land assembly problems and environmental issues in this area.

Thanks to the support of the group OPERA/Reform Capital development group, the studio class began the semester with a week-long visit to Bratislava and Vienna. During their visit to the city, students believed that Bratislava would experience continuing growth in population, numbers of jobs and dwellings, and substantial economic growth over the next decade or so. However, there was not a consensus as to how this growth should be guided, managed, and distributed.

The projections are based on its role at the center of an expanding automobile manufacturing region, its place in the EU which makes it attractive as a site for labor-intensive industries, and for grants and subsidies from the EU. It also qualifies as a site for specific EU initiatives aimed at fostering the integration and improvement of European higher education. The relatively rapid rate of GDP growth in Slovakia will also be translated into new demands on per capita living and working space and its quality.

Returning to MIT, the class devoted an initial two weeks to the study of contemporary precedents in various parts of the world for developments of this scale, use, and density. The review of comparable developments was followed by an individual design task calling for each student to imagine an overall form for a development on the site and to express this at a common scale in model form. While many of the proposals included some of the existing urban qualities of Bratislava, they have attempted to design an environment of higher standards and create a new entity to the city. In the fourth week of the semester, the four teams of students were formed to carry out the principal design task, culminating in the final review attended by guest critics and faculty. The designs strongly asserted the uniqueness of the valley and its existing circumstances. They provided many different open space opportunities, some close to housing and others of a larger communal nature.

It will take a long time to develop this site but through the thoughtfulness of the student projects it was obvious it has the potential to grow into a valuable and attractive community.

In 2008, students returned to study a site east of Bratislava. Ten thousand meters below the rolling hills of south-central Slovakia lies a remnant of the Tethys Ocean, a major sea dating back 22 million years. This ocean articulated the earth’s then surface lying between Gondwana Land and the area that we would recognize today as northeast Asia. Today this ocean remnant, about 80 square kilometers, 80 to 90 degrees Celsius in temperature, rich in mineral salts, and lying at a depth of 1700 to 2000 meters, has been identified as a potential source of water sufficient to support the development of a major thermal spa as well as a geothermal energy source.

The Magma Zafir corporation funded a design workshop to study the development of the Aqua Tethys spa project on a predominantly rural site adjoining the small villages of Bardonovo and Besa (popluation: approximately 500 people each). From the day it opens, this new project will need to offer a distinctive and memorable spa experience by virtue of its urban and landscape design, its architecture, its range of activities, and its management. It will need to do so in ways that will allow it to compete successfully with other spas in Central Europe, particularly those in nearby Hungary and Austria.

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“The studio engaged in two different approaches: a systemic one, and a more object- based one. The point will be to articulate their differences, in order for each to complement the other.”

Bilbao Urbanism Alan Berger, Alexander D’Hooghe Layers: Historical depositions, including growth patterns, vernacular shifts, filling of areas, future conversions of urban surfaces.

Flows: Water, ecological gradients, infrastructures of movement, connections, flows of various kinds over time Limits: Understanding the primary, secondary, and other boundaries between things. Includes jurisdictions, divisions of all controlling entities, and potential combinatory futures for dissolving these restrictions.

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This studio in Bilbao examined the Camino de Santiago, an ancient pilgrimage route still traveled today, as an alternative model for regional economic, ecological, and cultural redevelopment. Over centuries, the route became a powerful force, creating cities and infrastructure on a continental scale.

Using this model, students proposed a dynamic system of revitalization based on paths traversing the Nervion River Valley’s industrial axis. The paths created new means of experiencing the landscape, but also functioned as ecological catalysts or occupation mechanisms which developed over time. At pathsite intersections, laboratories were established to allow for scientific experimentation of alternative reclamation techniques. The labs were shared spaces with artist studios and tourist amenities that began a process of environmental and cultural production at the hyper-local scale. In this way, a new model for revitalization emerged based on a regional agglomeration of local progressive moves.

“It is in urbanized regions that the natural production of waste landscape should be productively exploited through new investment and strategically networked feedback mechanisms.”

The studio designed strategies for the area connecting the historic city of Bilbao to the Atlantic Ocean through an elongated system of road, harbor, and marine infrastructures. The student projects covered different scales from the territorial to the architectural.

Marine and landscape systems, as well as architectural infrastructures were investigated in order to devise a strategy for the very large scale.

The class addressed the real problems and issues of Bilbao, and attempted to aid with intelligent, generous and rigorous planning, and architecture solutions. In this sense, it operated as an enlightened architecture and planning agency, researching design solutions that optimize benefits for a large-as-possible

audience. Students sought to propose projects that benefit several constituencies with different political viewpoints and interests. The studio also organized a systematic self-reflection on disciplinary grounds.

It used an ongoing public dialogue between a systemic-landscape approach that considers multiscalar ecological processes. These terms became anchors of a conversation with disciplinary overtones, one that addressed the teleology and instrumentarium of contemporary territorial urbanism. Setting the terms of a mental discipline of working—or contributing to the structure of pure thought— was the task of the academy, and the ultimate goal was to perform it in this studio.

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Zaragoza Digital Mile Dennis Frenchman, William Mitchell, Carlo Ratti, Michael Joroff Project aimed to harness the city’s increased accessibility and visibility to achieve the following strategic urban and economic development goals: - Create a global identity for Zaragoza - Assert the city as a regional center for technological innovation - Build local skills in the use and development of information technology - Activate urban spaces that are currently underutilized - Express the evolving history and culture of Zaragoza

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In 2005, Zaragoza Mayor Juan Alberto Belloch worked with faculty and students from MIT to develop the “Digital Mile” project, in preparation for the 2008 International Exhibition hosted in Zaragoza, Spain. The plan resulted in an open source approach to actively engage the citizens in shaping the content of the Digital Mile and its daily use.

In defining the project, the research team focused on exploring the potential of advanced communications and media technology in the public realm rather than in buildings and private development. The result was an urban design and digital framework and specific proposals for digitally enhanced environments to serve the learning, skill development, and social interests of Zaragoza’s citizens, as well as to make the city more attractive for business growth and tourism.

The students designed a connective corridor between the neighborhoods of Portillo, Almozara, and Rivergate. Physical elements were organized along a pathway that stretched between these neighborhoods called the Paseo del Agua.

Bordering major roadways, on one side and park space on the other, the Paseo was seen as an important buffer between busy arterials and residential communities, as well as a vital pedestrian link between parts of the city separated by those arterials.

The Digital Mile helped position Zaragoza’s commercial enterprises, institutions, and citizens to participate in the economic and social environment of the 21st century. This environment was global, competitive, subject to continual change and uncertainty, and demanded that governments, businesses, institutions, and people work, play, and coordinate their activity through networks of organizations all connected electronically at all different levels.

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“Industrial new towns must have a sufficiently diverse economic base, or they will develop into mono-functional urban zones.”

“Growth is not inherently positive; it can be particularly problematic for a new town that was never designed to accommodate it.”

Kiryat Gat Industrial Urbanism Eran Ben-Joseph, Tali Hatuka Employing approximately 3,500 workers directly—and perhaps twice as many through parts manufacturing and service contracts—the Intel manufacturing plant in Kiryat Gat is the company’s largest.

Most industrial park employees live outside the city, while Kiryat Gat itself has high unemployment rates and a high proportion of its citizens receive public assistance. Despite this, there are plans to add 7,000 houses in a new neighborhood to the north of the existing city, in an effort to relieve pressure on limited housing stock.

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In 2012, a team of graduate students from Tel Aviv University and MIT collaborated to envision, plan, and design sustainable neighborhood prototypes for Kiryat Gat, which is the largest city in the agricultural Lachish Region with approximately 50,000 residents. While the proposals were specific to the challenges and opportunities faced within Kiryat Gat, the process was intended to generate approaches that could be adopted by new towns globally.

The team employed a variety of techniques to generate and refine their proposals, including stakeholder interviews, site visits, and in-depth analyses data. The finished project outlined a series of overlaid systems working together to create a unifying order for the city.

As part of the strategic plan envisioned for Kiryat Gat, seven steps are suggested for immediate implementation: a smart mobility transportation system, a network of tech pavilions, an integrated urban design language for Sderot Lachish, a residency program for artists and start-up companies, improvements along the industrial area corridor, a parking lot design competition, and a material flow analysis.

Each one of the components was significant on its own; however the plan’s strength lies in their integration, as the seven steps are inter-related and are all derived from the strategic plan. They have the power to generate long-term processes and to create an infrastructure of collaboration between the municipality, the private sector, and the community. The students envisioned that by 2025, Kiryat Gat will become a model of urban efficiency.

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“Living in this underserved district has given us a deeper understanding for what it means to have access, and hopefully this experience will enable us to be more effective as researchers and advocates for water and sanitation services. I have not yet tried to lift a 25-liter jerry can filled with water, but surely it is heavier than a messenger bag filled with groceries.”

MATIMozambique Gabriella Carolini, Anselmo Cani KaTembe was the largest of seven municipal districts in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, and represents roughly 40 percent of Maputo’s land area.

KaTembe was remarkable for the lack of density in its settlements: only 119 people per square kilometer (compared to nearly 20,000 people per square kilometer in other districts).

KaTembe was also unique in its poverty incidence of over 70 percent, one of the highest figures in the city.

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Activating Transformative Initiatives— Mozambique (MATI) was an MIT and University of Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) practicum developed to introduce a selected students to the concepts of reflective planning, heuristic learning through field practices, and advocacy planning with youth partners. The 2010 MATIMozambique practicum centered on practices in local community development and advocacy planning within an international development context, using the mechanism of water and sanitation services as an organizing linchpin.

Participating students cooperatively worked together during the course of the practicum. As originally conceived, the project was to gather and visualize data on neighborhood- based needs and resources in basic services in order to write a ‘Needs and Assets Assessment’ and to develop a methodology for measuring and understanding ‘affordability’ at the neighborhood scale.

Guachene Secretary, Doña Mia asked the MIT students to create a map of existing quarters and conduct a population survey of the area.

The initial plan to work on a map and needs/ assets assessment of water and sanitation, as well as to develop an affordability measure based on neighborhood characteristics, shifted shortly after the team arrived in KaTembe. After meetings at the local KaTembe District office with Engineer Manuel Nhone, the team learned details about planned developments for the urbanization of major parts of KaTembe and the scheduled resettlement of some communities.

After collecting the data, the team analyzed the findings and pulled out emerging trends. This information was provided to community leaders to themselves go to other institutions or higher levels of government. Advocacy planning required the active participation of planners on the one hand who can provide, gather, access, and importantly, analyze information in ways that local people or residents may not be able to, as well as the active participation of different local actors and stakeholders who have an embedded interest in improving their own livelihoods and communities. As a powerful illustration, the MATI practicum work—that developed from needs on the ground— was poised to help form the connection between Guachene and other institutions and associations by providing data that could help spur conversations around how to improve water and sanitation services in KaTembe.

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São Paulo Real Estate Dennis Frenchman, Peter Roth, Victor eskinazi Site and context: What makes a good site?

Recognizing real estate development opportunities and constraints inherent in a given location.

Development program: What makes a good project? Arriving at a development concept that best responds to the markets, while resolving physical, financial, and public policy constraints.

Project design: What is the right form and image for a program that maximizes benefits to the project and its surrounding community?

Economic feasibility: Does the project work financially? How should it unfold over time, managing risk while maximizing opportunities for value creation?

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“It was wonderful to have this opportunity to complement our primarily design-focused coursework with an education into the present day realities of commercial real estate in São Paulo.”

The Real Estate Development Studio engages real estate, planning, and architecture students in preparing professional development proposals – including market analysis, program, design, finance, and approval strategies – for real world sites and clients. In 2013 and 2014, the studio tackled a large development site in the Anhangabaú Valley, located in the historic core of São Paulo.

The Anhangabaú is surrounded by a mix of commercial, residential, institutional, civic, and open space, including a landmark midcentury modern skyscrapers on one side, and an ancient religious complex on the other side. The site is also immediately adjacent to one of the busiest subway stations in São Paulo. Plagued by complex patterns of ownership and traffic congestion, the downtown core has seen little new development in recent decades. Meanwhile, new commercial and residential centers have mushroomed along a highway vector to the southwest, extending farther and farther away from the center.

Progressive Paulistas, searching for a more sustainable model of urban development, are working to re-position downtown as a place to live as well as work. The downtown enjoys easy access to a huge workforce, because it is the focus of an extensive radial transit network.

Drawn by these assets, financial institutions and corporations have begun to reinvest in the core, lead by Viva O Centro, a downtown redevelopment advocacy group - the client for the studio.

Student teams proposed aggressive development of the Anhangabaú Valley, which is now the route of a major highway. Depressing the highway provides sites for major new buildings, public spaces, and cultural institutions, while preserving the iconic art-deco downtown, and other historic fabric. The infrastructure was financed by the city selling development rights (CEPACS) to the project area, and then reinvesting the proceeds in local improvements. Proposals envision a high-density 21st century center for Sao Paulo mixing new forms of work and living, the arts, design, food, and a human-scaled, very Brazilian, public realm.

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“This project seeks to make Dom Pedro II into a wonderful green resource: actively used day and night, linked to the downtown, and a generator of residential and commercial growth on its edges.”

Downtown São Paulo Julian Beinart, John de Monchaux, Victor Eskinazi The government has proposed that upwards of 100,000 units of housing be introduced for squatters Conflicts and insecurity arise from the street trade in drugs and prostitution, vagrancy, and the presence of homeless The under use and deterioration of much of the fine building stock, including a number of excellent buildings dating from the 1940’s -1970’s Ensuring that existing populations and businesses are not displaced by an increase in land values brought about by new development

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In 2006, forty students in architecture and city planning and a dozen of their professors came together in São Paulo to begin the joint São Paulo Urban Design Studio. They learned from one another about the city and especially about its central zone, and thereby were able put forward ideas that led to the renewal of place and opportunity for citizens. After an intensive week of exploration, questions, speculations, propositions, debate, and drawing, provided a common ground for the participants in the joint studio. Fourteen teams made up of MIT students, and their Brazilian counterparts, put forth a number of ideas.

The studio was initiated with the objective of creating open minded strong ideas for the city center with the participation of three universities.

These would have the power to stimulate debate and inspire actions that would enlarge the quality and range of opportunities in the core of the city, and in particular the north eastern edge of the core without adversely affecting those who visit or live in these areas.

The student teams put forward ideas that addressed the future of the neighborhoods of Luz, Pari, and Bras, and suggested how the implementation of these ideas would bring improved working conditions to those areas, to downtown, and to the city as a whole.

“As the city has decentralized to the south and west, opportunities to the east of the city center present themselves to create spatial balance and reinforce central impact.”

Across the dozen proposals there was both variety and congruence. Some were focused strongly on physical change to the infrastructure and use of the land. Others concentrated on the design of development processes which would have the potential to engage existing residents, users, stakeholders, and governments in step-by-step sequence of considered small-scale institutional actors. Yet others looked at upgrading a single system or element, such as the Tamanduateí River that flows through, and beyond, all three districts.

All projects, however, were meant to benefit the people and city that the students had come to know so intimately.

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Bus Rapid Transit Santiago Chris Zegras, Jan Wampler Bus Rapid Transit is a public transportation system that provides faster, more efficient service than an ordinary bus line. Often this is achieved by making improvements to existing infrastructure, vehicles and scheduling. The goal is to approach the service quality of rail transit while still enjoying the cost savings and flexibility of bus transit. BRT delivers fast, comfortable and cost effective urban mobility through: The provision of right-of-way infrastructure; rapid and frequent operations; and excellence in marketing and customer service.

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This urban design and planning workshop implemented simultaneously at MIT and the Pontificia Universidad CatĂłlica de Chile. The students examined BRT corridors, Santiago de Chile and Boston. The projects focused on the relationship between the design of bus rapid transit (BRT) systems and the planning and design of the urban environments in which they exist, paying particular attention to the design of the street as a complex space that fulfills multiple functions beyond traffic and mobility. BRT systems represent relatively advantageous transportation interventions in urban spaces: they can be relatively quickly and affordably implemented and, if done well, offer levels of service comparable to more time- and money-intensive projects (like Metros).

Nonetheless, these advantages come with challenges: typically occupying pre-existing roadways, BRT systems can be problematic from a transport and urban design perspective; using large buses at high frequencies, they pose challenges like noise pollution and traffic safety that may require particular urban design innovations to enable transit-oriented development (TOD) and equitable urban revitalization. The hypothesis was that BRT systems could be a successful driver of urban revitalization, however, subject to the proper, integrated design of the routes, public spaces, real estate projects, and the related policy packages necessary to induce good physical, social and env. outcomes.

Students began with analysis of the Gran Avenida corridor in Santiago through a weeklong workshop and charrette. They worked in site-focused teams, collaborating remotely to produce urban design proposals for segments of the corridor. In 2013, the PUC students traveled to Boston and joined the MIT students for in-person final presentations of the Gran Avenida proposals. The students then shifted their focus to the proposed Urban Ring corridor, working together for a week, then in parallel over the subsequent months, before final presentations.

The students met with various stakeholders, based on these perspectives, and the students’ own analyses and diagnostics, the teams each developed segment-specific visions for physical, social, and environmental outcomes. They were then tasked with developing cross-cutting transportation, urban design, planning, and funding strategies to realize these visions, and integrating these strategies along the length of the corridor.

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MAPPING

FORECASTING

ACTING

“This workshop contributes to the practice of spatial intervention on spaces of urban informality, merging community involvement in areas of poverty with the innovative physical approaches of design.”

Future Growth Comuna 8’s organic approach to growth supersedes the City’s attempts to curb urban development.

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“The conflict between informal urban communities and the state is not unique to the Medellín; the geography Scenario of 2 Scenario 1 Future Growth Scenario Examples Cinturon Initiated Growth informality in the “global south” and urban regeneration in the “global north” are filled with such conflicts.”

Unrestricted Growth

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Pedestrian paths may be perpendicular to topographic elevation lines.

Rethinking Informality

Due to the strong influence of geography and topography on Medellín was the most dangerous city In the 1990s, conditions at the fringe of Medellin, the 8world.

Since 2003, the city has undergone an residents of in Comuna have developed patterns of growth to work within those internationally urban transformation, natural constraints.

Understanding renowned how these informal settlements approach part toofreconciling a controversial nationwide peace process growth is essential the Comuna’s perspective with that of the implemented under three consecutive mayoral City.

Through theadministrations. rule set we developed, The City’s homicide rate is now we see clearly how topography informs howathese communities growit was, and the plan is seen as an tenth of what and shape their own transportation example ofneeds. how to engage with conflict and violence according to their Urban informality across the global networks.

When these rules are then applied to through spatial the context of the Cinturon Verde, it and urban policies. south accounts for up to one third immediately becomes apparent that of urban development in the world the City’s plan to use the Cinturon as boundary is futile. type this workshop was an international Starting inThis 2013, today. In recent years, it has becomeaofgrowth infrastructure will only fuel more and sprawl, as it is wholly obvious that informal housing and developmentcollaboration between the MIT School of disconnected from the mobility needs land markets are not just the domainof Comuna 8.Architecture + Planning, and practitioners and

Jota Samper, Catalina Ortiz, Javier Soto

2011

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Pedestrian paths with high fidelity to topography and bordering steep topography lines are more likely to become formalized by size and pavement quality.

When pedestrian paths cross multiple elevations a switchback typology is observed.

of the poor, but that they are also important for the middle class, and even the elite, of Second World and Third World cities. Such trends point to a complex continuum of legality and illegality, where squatter settlements formed through land invasion and self-help housing can exist alongside upscale informal subdivisions formed through legal ownership and market transaction but in violation of land use regulations.

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These switchbacks enable more density due to their continuity.

scholars in Colombia.

This workshop looked at the challenges of growth management of cities in the global south. On one side, it was interested in the creation of predictive models of city growth as tools to inform design and planning decision making process; even more importantly, it was interested in generating urban development strategies that use the inherent qualities of the informal development in the cities in the south as a way to direct growth in ways that are sustainable and equitable.

Building orientation is parallel to elevation lines.

Quebradas act as natural physical and social boundaries but also manifest as thoroughfares.

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Students conducted on-site fieldwork on the growth of informal settlements in Medellín’s Comuna 8 neighborhood. Working with local counterparts, the MIT class worked in a studio environment space to quickly assess the challenges and produce quick ideas and prototypes of possible strategies. Using photography, video recordings, and community meetings, as well as questionnaires on site, members gathered information necessary to develop a preliminary design vision for the selected sites.

These diagrams show two examples of projected growth at the fringe in relation to existing development. From top to bottom: these images show the projected growth against existing satellite imagery; these diagrams show the current level of development against the proposed path of the Cinturon; and these diagrams forecast how new networks and development will occur according to the codified growth patterns.

Returning to MIT, the class combined seminars, discussions, and studio formats as course members grappled with revising the criteria and preliminary design proposals produced during the fieldtrip, researched the “state of the art” in urban strategies for the intervention on contexts of urban informality, and developed new criteria and design proposals. By mapping and understanding ways in which informal settlements have historical growth and envisioning trajectories based on ongoing development patterns and proposed projects, the students were able to understand the context in which state intervention happens in areas of urban informality. In the end, they developed criteria and design strategies and communication skills that make the proposals relevant for decision-makers, the community, institutions, and other stakeholders.

In 2015, the class returned to explore Medellín’s New Jerusalem neighborhood, allowing students to discover firsthand the process and form of fast informal urbanization as well as its consequences.

Learning from the successful social agenda and the ‘integrated urban projects’ that regenerated the informal fabrics of Medellín, they explored the potential for planned infrastructural interventions to help new informal settlers.

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“One million people per week will be joining the urban life in many contexts of our planet in the next fifteen years—often into informal settlements.”

Infrastructure in Medellín JOTA SAMPER, Lorena Bello, Catalina Ortiz, Manuel Ortega Slums, Comunas, Favelas, Bidonvilles, Chabolas, Correas, Barracas, Kampung, Morros, Squatters or Shanty Towns, just to name a few, are the physical manifestation of informality: a geography that results from the lack of capacity of city managers to effectively respond to the huge migration, speed of occupation, and lack of means of rural newcomers. While informality is not new, what is remarkable about today’s era is both the speed and scale of the process as well as the growth in inequalities between formal and informal settlers. For these reasons many think that together with climate change, informality is one of the most pressing problems to be tackled by urban thinkers and designers in our century in the Global South.

It is expected that up to five billion people will be living in urban areas by 2030.

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The Medellín approach to informal settlements has been celebrated as one of the best models in the world. A strong social, political and design vision were able to transform a former world murder capital into a fairly good place to live in the last two decades. The overall goal of the Medellín Studio was to take the Manatiales de Paz neighborhood as a case study for research and action which let you discover firsthand the process and form of fast informal urbanization as well as its consequences.

The studio was a collaboration between MIT’s School of Architecture + Planning, the School of Architecture and Planning at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Medellín, Board of Manantiales de Paz in the Municipality of Bello, and the community.

The students visited Medellín on an initial workshop, touring the urban projects in informal settlements and meeting with community partners in the city: Peers at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Medellín, the municipality of Bello, and the Manantiales de Paz board.

This environment enabled students to generate quick ideas and strategies that directed their future investigations. Through photographs, videorecordings, lectures, interviews, city walks, site visits and informative conversations with faculty, public officials and professionals of city making, students were able to start gathering knowledge on urban synergies and successful projects on the city; they were able to learn from the MdP board the goals and projects of the community, and with their own interests choose within the different lines of investigation that continued to be researched through mapping and design when back at MIT.

Work continued during the semester both in Medellín, Colombia and in Cambridge, MA. The Colombian academic counterparts visited Cambridge where advance ideas on the proposals were presented to the broad SA + P community to get feedback. At the end of the semester, a final document with the students work was compiled and delivered to the community partner and the municipality of Bello.

“Informal fabrics are subject to many social and environmental problems which also compromise the ecological carrying capacity of their host territory.”

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“This workshop offers the opportunity to re-conceptualize the role of public space (the public realm) as a means to integrate the informal and the formal components of these many times socially and spatially divided cities.”

Formal and Informal Bogotá Oscar grauer, Jota samper Envisioned solutions capable to integrate formal and informal components of the city through innovative interventions in the public realm. In particular, the workshop focused on the design qualities that urban public spaces should have in order to support neighborhood cohesion, social interaction, environmental mitigation and economic vitality.

Explore alternative design approaches that incorporated new infrastructural technology and anthropological components in the decision making processes and design solutions.

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Benefit from interdisciplinary and cross-cultural debate/work, to effectively address the challenges related to formal and informal interaction.

Developed criteria and design solutions and communication skills that make the proposals relevant for decision makers, the community, institutions, and other stakeholders.

This was an international collaboration between MIT School of Architecture + Planning and three universities in Bogotá, Colombia: the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Universidad de Los Andes and the Universidad de la Salle to envision, plan, and design prototypical criteria and design solutions as relevant proposals for decision makers, the community, institutions and other stakeholders around issues of the forma informal conflict in the area of the Parque Tercer Milenio in Bogotá, Colombia.

The workshop focused on the Parque Tercer Milenio, a large public space built during Mayor Peñalosa’s citywide revitalization plan. This space resulted from the eradication of an extremely dangerous inner-city informal settlement whose residents had occupied in a decaying late 19th - early 20th Century district, located between the historic district of Bogotá, and vacant/ underutilized industrial land. The violent removal and demolition of the district to accommodate the park forced its residents to relocate in the adjacent non-consolidated/inactive zones. Despite the political will to tackle a major urban problem, the design efforts and the investment in creating the park, it was still considered a highly problematic area of Bogotá.

The class objective was to integrate its proposed design solutions both physical intervention and strategic project that dealt with the socioeconomic structural issues identified in the area.

It did so at multiple scales with an interdisciplinary and international group of students from four universities. Our workshop production was quite varied and students found new and creative ways to understand the area and the role of the park in the future of Bogotá and the adjacent neighborhoods. However, three themes, we found as we worked, were organically common to most projects: the need for a re-design of the park, to address the problematic lack of inclusion of the surrounding community, and to re-define the park not as a leisure space but as an agent of change.

Students were challenged to develop criteria and specific proposals for the area, addressing issues of connectivity, interaction, security, urban, social interaction/performance, sustainability, transportation and urban equity.

In conclusion, the larger academic contribution of this project is that it is possible to re-think the way we develop urban projects in areas that present the challenges of informal occupation of the public space. We can work in ways that go beyond eviction and modernist projects.

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Urban Climate Adaptation in South Africa JoAnn Carmin, Debra Roberts Ten graduate students from DUSP spent three weeks in Durban, South Africa, working on a project to develop an online tool that would help municipal governments around the world adapt to a changing climate. During their trip, the students concentrated on gathering information from representatives working in diverse municipal agencies and uncovering adaptation activities that were taking place in the course of routine work.

Over the next year, that information was used to develop and refine the planned tool that could aid Durban and other cities in initiating adaptation efforts.

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In interviews and field trips, the students learned what people understood about climate change and current climate activities in Durban as well as tried to identify innovative adaptation techniques that could readily be adopted elsewhere Originally, the group thought of developing a very specific planning tool for Durban, but agency representatives there urged them to make it one that any municipality could use. Among other things, the Climate Ready tool would help cities learn what others in similar situations have already tried to do, especially relatively simple steps that can be implemented in the course of their normal activities.

For example, a common climate change challenge is receding water levels in reservoirs due to water scarcity. By following repairmen around, the students found that in the course of their routine work, they would connect pipes conveying water from different reservoirs at the points where they intersect. This way, when one reservoir has low water capacity, the other reservoir could feed the city. By connecting the pipes, the workmen were initiating a quick and inexpensive measure that ensures that the system can adapt to fluctuations in water availability.

The best strategy was to start with what the students could actually do at the moment. By meeting with representatives working at all levels of municipal agencies, they found that sometimes, it’s the people on the ground who recognize climate problems more quickly and came up with solutions that were straightforward to implement.

The Climate Ready tool was organized around critical municipal functions such as emergency management, health, water and sanitation, energy, environment and biodiversity, housing, social service. People were asked to input basic information about their work and then receive output that would help them identify ways they can link their ongoing efforts to short and long-term adaptation measures.

As the project progressed the students held focus groups in several South Africa cities as well as those in other countries to make sure the tool would be something that was truly useful. The tool continued to be developed but was never fully implemented due to lack of time. Professor Carmin’s work convened cities to work together on climate adaptation and think carefully about what would be possible approaches to strengthen their climate adaptation planning work.

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Transport Cartagena Chris Zegras, Martha Isabel Bonilla-Penalosa, Ralph Gakenheimer In 2008 the city of Cartagena, Colombia was in the process of developing a new Bus Rapid Transit System (BRT), planned to run through the densest urban areas.

One of the critical phases would cross directly through Bazurto, a crucial market where more than 80% of the city’s residents get their food.

As a result, the city faced a major challenge: how to develop the BRT system while also rebuilding and relocating Bazurto in the process. The mayor’s office was struggling with the coordination of these two very different, very complex urban macro-projects, both of which intersected in the same public space and affected multiple different and powerful actors.

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Over two consecutive years, students from DUSP/MIT worked collaboratively with students from the Universidad Tecnológica de Bolivar, Cartagena (UTB) to explore these inter-related efforts; identify key actors, relationships, conflicts; and design policy recommendations.

In 2008-2009 the class analyzed interrelationship among stakeholders of the market and identified strategies to meet stakeholder needs while also improving the function of the market within the city. The Practicum was carried out as part of UTB’s University’s “Agenda Universitaria Contra la Pobreza” (Agenda to Confront Poverty) and included participatory workshops with a broad range of stakeholders, primary and secondary data collection and analysis, and consultation with local and foreign experts in related fields,

such as informality, economic development, public safety, and urban transportation. The final proposals included a new administrative system for the system of markets in Cartagena to improve the supply of food to city’s residents, particularly the most at-risk population.

In 2009-2010, the Practicum provided a context for understanding the challenges of urban food provisioning from a perspective of sustainability and social inclusion in cities of the global South. Students collaborated with government officials and academics to study the current food supply system, identifying key challenges and opportunities and developing policy recommendations. The class explored critical issues in urban markets and food provisioning, considering the key elements of efficient, sustainable, and inclusive urban food systems: transport and logistics, land use, and informal sector participation.

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Simulating Sustainable Futures Michael Flaxman, Juan Carlos Vargas-Moreno Planning requires both the ability to look into the future and to communicate effectively about it. In spatial planning, this means skills in dynamic modeling and geospatial visualization are increasingly critical. The workshops concentrated on aspects of spatial planning beyond static analyses, including two forms of dynamics.

The first was urban growth modeling, more generally known as land use change modeling. The second was interactive representations such as zoomable maps and navigable geovisualizations. Along the way, the students learned how to use spatial scenario planning as a means for organizing complex public and private discussions.

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Cabo San Lucas is a mountain-backed beach resort of exceptional natural beauty and fragility. The area is essentially a desert, but one which is subject to strong hurricanes on a regular basis. It has also become an international tourist destination and is current experiencing extraordinarily high growth pressure. In the last three years, tourism has doubled and population has been growing at a rate of 15-20% per year. This area has nearly full employment and a per capita income double the national average – both key issues in a country of widespread poverty.

The current master plan for the area is relatively recent and only 40% built out. However, in response to both growth pressure and to local political concerns about the location of future development and its revenue streams, the state government has commissioned a new master plan. This plan allocates approximately six times the developable area of the current plan. It proposes a new city, a newly reinstated airport, and extensive development in current conservation areas, including mountainous foothills and floodplains.

This plan would locate most development on former communally-owned “Ejido” lands, providing income to inland residents who have not benefited as much from recent development as coastal owners.

A consortium of local citizens has asked for DUSP assistance in evaluating current conditions and proposals, and in developing a set of preferred alternatives. Their concerns vary, as do their interests. Local business and hotel owners are interested in increased economic opportunities, but very concerned that the proposed expansion of development could jeopardize the environment which has thus far provided one of the best highend tourism markets in Mexico. Meanwhile, environmental advocates are alarmed at both the extent and location of proposed development zones, arguing that there is not sufficient water or energy to support the proposal and that the environmental consequences of building in sensitive areas will be substantial.

The class used scenario-based planning techniques to simultaneously investigate several possible options. The students learned how to perform urban growth modeling (UGM) and land use change modeling using standard geographic information systems (GIS). They then used scenario-planning methods to generate a small number of discrete scenarios that encapsulated key policy questions or uncertainties. The class simulated “alternative futures” by running scenarios through land use change models. Students explored new means of publically representing scenarios using interactive web mapping and 3D visual simulation.

While the case study area were in Mexico, the techniques covered were general and suitable almost any area where GIS data can be obtained or created. Each student was given the opportunity to focus on a type of land use change of personal interest. In contrast to more analytically-oriented GIS courses, there was also significant time to develop proscriptive proposals or design explorations, and to test and discuss new technologies for the visual representation of land use change.

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Department of Urban Studies and Planning Copyright Š 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology SA+P Press All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, unless specifically permitted in the text or by written permission from the publisher.

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