Tag: Urban studies and planning

Suzanne Freeman and Mariel Garcia-Montes receive 2023 Jeanne Guillemin Prize

Suzanne Freeman and Mariel Garcia-Montes are the recipients of this year’s Jeanne Guillemin Prize at the Center for International Studies (CIS). The prize provides financial support to women studying international affairs, a field that has long been dominated by men. Jeanne Guillemin, a veteran colleague at CIS, endowed the fund shortly before her death in 2019. […]

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Boston Mayor Michelle Wu asks SA+P advanced degree recipients to be forces for good in Boston and beyond

Evoking the historic impact that the late urban planners and MIT faculty Tunney Lee and Mel King had on the city, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu challenged the 2023 graduates of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) to remember to put people first throughout their careers. “Everything you sketch, plan, shape, and build — the spaces […]

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MIT junior Anushree Chaudhuri named 2023 Udall Scholar

MIT junior Anushree Chaudhuri has been selected as a 2023 Morris K. Udall and Stewart L. Udall Foundation Scholar. She is only the second MIT student to win this award and the first winner since 2008. The Udall Scholarship honors students who have demonstrated a commitment to the environment, Native American health care, or tribal […]

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Six ways MIT is taking action on climate

From reuse and recycling to new carbon markets, events during Earth Month at MIT spanned an astonishing range of ideas and approaches to tackling the climate crisis. The MIT Climate Nucleus offered funding to departments and student organizations to develop programming that would showcase the countless initiatives underway to make a better world. Here are […]

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Six ways MIT is taking action on climate

From reuse and recycling to new carbon markets, events during Earth Month at MIT spanned an astonishing range of ideas and approaches to tackling the climate crisis. The MIT Climate Nucleus offered funding to departments and student organizations to develop programming that would showcase the countless initiatives underway to make a better world. Here are […]

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Will the charging networks arrive in time?

For many owners of electric vehicles (EVs), or for prospective EV owners, a thorny problem is where to charge them. Even as legacy automakers increasingly invest in manufacturing more all-electric cars and trucks, there is not a dense network of charging stations serving many types of vehicles, which would make EVs more convenient to use. […]

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Architectural heritage like you haven’t seen it before

The shrine of Khwaja Abu Nasr Parsa is a spectacular mosque in Balkh, Afghanistan. Also known as the “Green Mosque” due to the brilliant color of its tiled and painted dome, the intricately decorated building dates to the 16th century. If it were more accessible, the Green Mosque would attract many visitors. But Balkh is […]

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Architectural heritage like you haven’t seen it before

The shrine of Khwaja Abu Nasr Parsa is a spectacular mosque in Balkh, Afghanistan. Also known as the “Green Mosque” due to the brilliant color of its tiled and painted dome, the intricately decorated building dates to the 16th century. If it were more accessible, the Green Mosque would attract many visitors. But Balkh is […]

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Thirteen from MIT win 2023 Fulbright fellowships

Thirteen MIT undergraduates, graduate students, and alumni have been awarded Fulbright fellowships and will embark on projects overseas in the 2023-24 grant year. Four other MIT affiliates were offered awards but declined them to pursue other opportunities. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers American citizen students and recent […]

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A transformative era ends at the Center for International Studies

In the early 1980s, Richard Samuels PhD ’80 was an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, specializing in Japanese politics and public policy. With the rapid emergence of Japan as a global economic powerhouse, Samuels, now the director of the Center for International Studies (CIS) and Ford International Professor of Political Science, had […]

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Study: Covid-19 has reduced diverse urban interactions

The Covid-19 pandemic has reduced how often urban residents intersect with people from different income brackets, according to a new study led by MIT researchers. Examining the movement of people in four U.S. cities before and after the onset of the pandemic, the study found a 15 to 30 percent decrease in the number of […]

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Driving toward data justice

As a person with a mixed-race background who has lived in four different cities, Amelia Dogan describes her early life as “growing up in a lot of in-betweens.” Now an MIT senior, she continues to link different perspectives together, working at the intersection of urban planning, computer science, and social justice. Dogan was born in […]

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MIT PhD students honored for their work to solve critical issues in water and food

In 2017, the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) initiated the J-WAFS Fellowship Program for outstanding MIT PhD students working to solve humankind’s water-related challenges. Since then, J-WAFS has awarded 18 fellowships to students who have gone on to create innovations like a pump that can maximize energy efficiency even with changing […]

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MIT student Malhaar Agrawal named 2023 Truman Scholar

MIT junior Malhaar Agrawal has been selected as a 2023 Truman Scholar. Established by the U.S. Congress in 1975 as a living memorial to President Harry S. Truman and a national monument to public service, the Truman Scholarship supports and inspires the next generation of public service leaders. Truman Scholars are selected for their outstanding […]

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Mel King Community Fellowship Program upholds the late civil rights activist’s legacy

On April 3, community advocates from around the U.S. who work in long-term care gathered with members of the MIT community to discuss ways to increase equity in the industry for care workers, families, and the elderly. With its impassioned attendees and emphasis on workers’ well-being, the meeting felt more like a grassroots strategizing session […]

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Remembering Mel King, adjunct professor emeritus in urban studies and planning

Mel King, an adjunct professor emeritus in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) and renowned activist, community leader, and politician, passed away on March 28 at the age of 94. Through his teaching, ideas, and the institutions he created at MIT, King profoundly influenced DUSP and its community members, who showcase the love […]

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MIT Center for Real Estate advances climate and sustainable real estate research agenda

Real estate investors are increasingly putting sustainability at the center of their decision-making processes, given the close association between climate risk and real estate assets, both of which are location-based. This growing emphasis comes at a time when the real estate industry is one of the biggest contributors to global warming; its embodied and operational […]

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Designing for better lives

Even though Flavio Emilio Vila Skrzypek left his native country of Peru to study at MIT, you can tell immediately that his homeland is close to his heart. Vila, who is pursuing a master’s in city planning, has made it his mission to improve land-use policy back home. “Property policies in Peru should learn from […]

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Low-cost device can measure air pollution anywhere

Air pollution is a major public health problem: The World Health Organization has estimated that it leads to over 4 million premature deaths worldwide annually. Still, it is not always extensively measured. But now an MIT research team is rolling out an open-source version of a low-cost, mobile pollution detector that could enable people to […]

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Chess players face a tough foe: air pollution

Here’s something else chess players need to keep in check: air pollution. That’s the bottom line of a newly published study co-authored by an MIT researcher, showing that chess players perform objectively worse and make more suboptimal moves, as measured by a computerized analysis of their games, when there is more fine particulate matter in […]

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Preparing to be prepared

The Kobe earthquake of 1995 devastated one of Japan’s major cities, leaving over 6,000 people dead while destroying or making unusable hundreds of thousands of structures. It toppled elevated freeway segments, wrecked mass transit systems, and damaged the city’s port capacity. “It was a shock to a highly engineered, urban city to have undergone that […]

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Study: Extreme heat is changing habits of daily life

Extreme temperatures make people less likely to pursue outdoor activities they would otherwise make part of their daily routine, a new study led by MIT researchers has confirmed. The data-rich study, set in China, shows that when hourly temperatures reach 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), people are 5 percent less likely to go to […]

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