This goal encompasses concerns of environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, and equitable accessibility. Those concerns are table stakes, and must be included in any serious attempt to make our cities better. My thesis is that those concerns are not enough, by themselves, to radically improve our cities. We can, and should, retrofit our cities to make them more equitable and sustainable, but we should also aim to move our cities forward to a future where our built environment catalyztres our well-being and happiness.
My background is in software, and I do believe technology can help our cities significantly. However, I am not an advocate for integrating technology for technology’s sake, and we must be deliberate and thoughtful about ensuring technology serves the goals we have for our societies and our cities. Anyone working closely with AI, like I have been, must understand this.
Of all the institutions I’ve researched, MIT is the most interested in treating research areas not as standalone but as integrated systems across multiple disciplines. This is what attracted me to the System Design and Management program, and is what attracts me to doing learn and research more about city planning at MIT. The built environment of a city is not distinct from matters of policy, public health, transportation, economics, and technology. One can see this in the number of labs within the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and the number of other research centers that also work with cities (Transportation, Media Lab, Morningside). It is this integrative approach that first gave me the excitement to begin working