City Science @ San Francisco (CS@SF), under development, is a civic initiative actively seeking support to launch the lab and to join the international network of affiliated City Science labs.
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City Science @ San Francisco (CS@SF), under development, is a civic initiative actively seeking support to launch the lab and to join the international network of affiliated City Science labs.
The City Science Lab @ San Francisco will model complex civic challenges in order to provide residents, policymakers, and advocates with data-driven insights to design and pilot solutions together.
Model the city. Change the outcome.
Traditional planning often treats housing, zoning, transit, economic development, and finance as separate silos. We are building a complex systems model that treats each system as deeply interconnected, where each change ripples through the whole.
Housing · Zoning & land use · Economic development · Transit & mobility · Capital & finance
This approach has real, measurable impact: ensuring developers and construction capital are motivated to invest in new housing types is what gets that housing built on time. Modeling residents' mobility patterns similarly clarifies real parking, transit, bike, and foot-traffic needs.
CS@SF will work across sectors to strengthen the city's capacity to anticipate change, respond to complex challenges, and turn promising ideas into action.
It will work with government departments, advocacy organizations, academic researchers, industry partners, and residents to extend civic capacity, broaden foresight, and explore solutions beyond day-to-day operations.
San Francisco provides a uniquely dynamic environment and talented citizenry in which to apply, test, and advance new civic ideas. MIT City Science at the Media Lab pioneered the modeling and visualization methods that will be deployed by CS@SF.
CS@SF's systems modeling will allow us to map the full web of interdependencies across the housing system. Policymakers can test whether a zoning change delivers the units it promises; developers can see which parcels pencil out; residents can see how a project reshapes their block.
This year's focus will be turning recent and proposed housing legislation into real housing supply. Family Zoning passed in 2025, but new construction still hasn't followed because the economics don't pencil out.
Systems modeling enables us to identify unrealized land opportunities through new technology, approaches, and regulatory reform.
Through collaborations, CS@SF aim to launch pilot builds and develop programs that can be deployed at scale throughout the city, region, state, and beyond.
We model housing, zoning, financing, construction, and other interconnected systems to understand how changes in one part of the city affect another.
We identify which parcels are feasible for development under different scenarios.
We partner to build pilots that prove the model in practice.
We extend what works into policy and programs across the city, state, and nation.
A CityScope platform lets residents see how their own block would likely develop under new Family Zoning rules and whether that change is economically feasible. The work was demonstrated on stage at OpenAI DevDay.
Throughout 2025, the CS@SF team worked with SPUR (San Francisco Planning & Urban Research Association), SF Planning, the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, and community groups to visualize how proposed zoning changes could affect neighborhoods.
We prototyped a system to explore which policy combinations, from zoning and building codes to financing and construction methods can deliver the optimal mix of affordable and market-rate housing, faster.
Traditional civic hackathons often produce solutions that are disconnected from actual city operations and don't sustain themselves beyond Sunday night.
The City AI Challenge tested a different model: city department staff identified operational challenges from their daily work, then collaborated with volunteer mentors matched from San Francisco's rich technologist community.
Each team collaborated in a short sprint to define the opportunity, identify technical approaches, and scope a pilot to prove traction.
CS@SF team helped organize the event and Mayor Daniel Lurie announced the intention of the city of San Francisco to collaborate with CS@SF after it's launch.
CS@SF is a public-good civic initiative bringing together experience from the private, public, academic, and nonprofit sectors to strengthen San Francisco's civic ecosystem. The local team is working towards the establishment of a City Science Lab @ San Francisco.
We are bringing together San Francisco's world-class talent around some of its most pressing challenges. We are looking for supporters and collaborators.
Contact: cssf@media.mit.edu