By Maria Iacobo

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 and places we create — are empty without people,” said Wu. “Not just literally, but in terms of their energy, purpose, and spirit, because it’s ultimately about what the space fosters and creates for people that gives it life, meaning, and power.”

Speaking at SA+P’s Advanced Degree Ceremony, at which 200 students received master's and doctoral degrees in architecture, urban planning, real estate development, and media arts and sciences, Wu shared that she was not always enamored of government or City Hall. Growing up in Chicago as the eldest child of Chinese immigrants, she had “occasional unavoidable interactions with government that were always experiences filled with embarrassment and dread” given language and cultural barriers...

...Following the dean’s welcome was Tod Machover, the Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media, and director of the MIT Media Lab’s Opera of the Future group, who — joined by several musicians — performed a composition created especially for the event, entitled “A Little Hub Symphony.” The three-minute piece incorporated several sounds culled from the Boston area including Fenway Park, the seashore, and even Mayor Wu playing a piano solo with the Boston Symphony Orchestra earlier this spring.

In her closing remarks, Wu noted that “there are thousands of graduate schools out there who can teach you how to build a building, design a space, or master the latest techniques of micro-fabrication — shout out to all the Media Lab graduates — but of all your options, you chose this place. Its people and its values. Values that set it apart, that ask you to consider what kind of impact you want to have on the world and if what you are building is moving you closer to having that impact.”