Research
Sculpting Evolution

Cultivating wisdom through evolutionary and ecological engineering
Research
Camera Culture

Making the invisible visible–inside our bodies, around us, and beyond–for health, work, and connection
Research
Media Lab Research Theme: Future Worlds

Future Worlds | Design and action for the future we want to live in
Project Research

Design Justice Project at MIT

​We take as a starting point for our work the recent scholarship by Sasha Costanza-Chock, Design Justice, in which she described design jus…
Project Research

Autonomous micro-mobility simulation study

What will be the impact of shared autonomous micro-mobility systems? Will autonomy make the micro-mobility systems even more attractive?&nb…
Project Research

Autonomous micro-mobility for food deliveries

Could we substitute cars by shared autonomous lightweight vehicles for food delivery? We have developed an agent-based simulation model tha…
Research
Poetic Justice

Exploring new forms of social justice through art
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City Science

Looking beyond smart cities
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Responsive Environments

Augmenting and mediating human experience, interaction, and perception with sensor networks
Project Research

Theme | CityScope

City Science researchers are developing a slew of tangible and digital platforms dedicated to solving spatial design and urban planning cha…
Project Research

Theme | Mobility On-Demand

Urban populations around the world are rapidly growing. To improve livability, urban residents must reduce dependency on fossil fuels and p…
Article Research

Bringing design justice to the classroom and workplace

Project shares ways to create community around design equity, ethics, and justice.
Research
Viral Communications

People and intelligent machines in a creative, symbiotic loop
Article Research

Study shows how pandemic decreased income diversity of urban encounters, even after lockdowns

GeekWire reports on research that people were less likely to visit socioeconomically different areas while returning to pre-pandemic habits.
Project Research

City Science Network

MIT City Science has developed an international network of cooperative City Science LabsWe are developing concepts and key technology that …
Project Research

Can autonomy make bike-sharing more sustainable?

Autonomous bicycles have recently been proposed as a new and more efficient approach to bicycle-sharing systems, but how do they compare fr…
Project Research

City Science Lab @ Toronto

City Science Lab Toronto was established in cooperation with Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada.  It  started in 2018 and is t…
Project Research

City Science Lab @ Andorra

Andorra and the City Science research group at the MIT Media Lab are taking on the challenge of turning Andorra into an “Internationally Re…
Article Research

Americans have become less willing to explore their own cities

In a new study, researchers from MIT and other universities show that personal mobility during the Covid-19 pandemic hasn't fully recovered.
Research
MIT Center for Constructive Communication

MIT Center for Constructive Communication
Article Research

Could self-driving bikes change how we use cities?

Kent Larson, head of the Media Lab’s City Science group, and PhD student Naroa Coretti Sánchez talk about the group's work and philosophy.
Research
Human Dynamics

Exploring how social networks can influence our lives in business, health, governance, and technology adoption and diffusion
Project Research

City Science Lab @ Hamburg

MIT City Science is working with HafenCity University to develop CityScope for the neighborhood of Rothenburgsort in Hamburg, Germany. The …
Archived
Research
Social Machines

Promoting deeper learning and understanding in human networks
Research
Personal Robots

Building intelligent personified technologies that collaborate with people to help them learn, thrive, and flourish.
Article Research

Study: Covid-19 has reduced diverse urban interactions

Mobility-related data show the pandemic has had a lasting effect, limiting the breadth of places people visit in cities.
Project Research

Measuring and reducing social segregation in cities

We use high-resolution geospatial data collected from mobile phones to measure social segregation at an unprecedented resolution in cities …
Article Research

How’s Your City Doing? Ask the Honeybees.

Media Lab collaborators show that debris from urban beehives can be used to profile the microbiome of a city.
Research
Opera of the Future

Extending expression, learning, and health through innovations in musical composition, performance, and participation
Project Research

Persuasive Electric Vehicle (PEV)

An Alternative Autonomous Revolution System design for emerging urban contexts and societal aspirationsThe Persuasive Electric Vehicle…
Archived
Research
Collective Learning

Transforming data into knowledge
Article Research

The One Earth Model: Geographic interoperability in the real-world metaverse

Michael Naimark considers the potential of the "real-world metaverse," which combines virtual experiences with specific physical places.
Article Research

Using game engines and “twins” to co-create stories of climate futures

Ceasar McDowell, among others, spoke to participants at the WORLDING workshop on “Land-Use Planning and Authorship."
Archived
Project Research

City Science Lab @ Aalto

Aalto University, Finland, and the MIT Media Lab’s City Science group are co-developing a version of the MIT CityScope platform for urban a…
Archived
Article Research

Autonomous shared micro-mobility systems could be the next revolution in urban mobility

City Science researchers Naroa Coretti, Iñigo Martinez, Luis Alonso, and Kent Larson discuss their research on autonomous shared bicycles.
Publication Research

Can autonomy make bicycle-sharing systems more sustainable? An environmental impact analysis

Naroa Coretti Sanchez, Luis Alonso Pastor, Kent Larson, Can autonomy make bicycle-sharing systems more sustainable? An environmental impact analysis, Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, Volume 113, 2022, 103489, ISSN 1361-9209, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2022.103489
Article Research

'I Make Tiny Homes That Can Grow 33% Bigger'

Hasier Larrea, an alum of the City Science research group, talks about the research that led him to co-found spinoff Ori.
Archived
Research
Scalable Cooperation

Reimagining human cooperation in the age of social media and artificial intelligence
Archived
Research
Open Agriculture (OpenAg)

Open Agriculture Initiative (OpenAg)
Archived
Project Research

Narrative Visualization for Distributed Urban Interventions

The use of data-driven methods to examine dynamic spaces, relationships, and mechanisms within an urban environment frames the city as a co…
Archived
Archived
Project Research

You Are Here

You Are Here is an experiment in microurbanism. In this project, we are creating 100 maps each of 100 different cities. Each map gives a c…
Archived
Article Research

Best New Ideas in Money: The road ahead for public transit

A discussion of the future of public transportation, with a highlight of the Autonomous Bicycle project led by PhD student Naroa Coretti.
Project Research

CityScope Champs-Élysées

An interactive  platform to improve decision-making related to the revitalization of the Champs ÉlyséesCityScope Champs-Élysée is a ta…
Archived
Project Research

Synthetic Apiary

The Synthetic Apiary proposes a new kind of environment, bridging urban and organismic scales by exploring one of the most important organi…
Archived
Article Research

Ori’s partnership with Marriott Hotels, announced at CES this week

Spinoff Ori, co-founded by alum Hasier Larrea, has announced an agreement to partner with Marriott Hotels’ Design Lab.
Project Research

The Power of Without

The Power of WITHOUT is a research theme in the City Science group. The theme proposes that heavy infrastructure solutions are not financia…
Article Research

The barriers to innovation

Opera of the Future alum Joe Chung writes that Boston is ideally suited to become a hub of the world’s longevity-innovation ecosystem.
Project Research

The MIT Autonomous Bicycle Project

A lightweight research platform to develop autonomous technology Designed to transform bicycle-sharing systems into an on-demand mobil…
Article Research

City Science Lab @ Taipei

NTUT, MIT sign ‘smart’ development agreement
Publication Research

Mobility patterns are associated with experienced income segregation in large US cities

Moro, E., Calacci, D., Dong, X. et al. Mobility patterns are associated with experienced income segregation in large US cities. Nat Commun 12, 4633 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24899-8
Project Research

The Atlas of Inequality

Segregation is hurting our societies and especially our cities. But economic inequality isn't just limited to neighborhoods. The restaurant…
Article Research

Driving commuters toward sustainable options

How data from Access MIT informs flexible, sustainable commutes as staff returns to campus.
Article Research

Norman Foster launches 'On Cities' masterclass series

A new masterclass video series from the Norman Foster Foundation features leading experts in the fields of architecture, urbanism, and more.
Article Research

Kent Larson on Resilient Communities and Sustainability | "On Cities" Masterclass Series

Kent Larson considers the societal stressors caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and those that the world will face post-pandemic.
Article Research

Biennale Architettura 2021 - Presentation

The 17th International Architecture Exhibition, “How will we live together?" includes work from the City Science research group.
Project Research

Andorra | Dynamic Urban Planning

View the main City Science Andorra project profile.Research in dynamic tools, mix users (citizens, workers) amenities, services, and land u…
Publication Research

Travel Demand and Traffic Prediction with Cell Phone Data: Calibration by Mathematical Program with Equilibrium Constraints

Doorley, R., Alonso, L., Grignard, A., Maciá, N. and Larson, K., 2020, September. Travel Demand and Traffic Prediction with Cell Phone Data: Calibration by Mathematical Program with Equilibrium Constraints. In 2020 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC) (pp. 1-8). IEEE.
Post Research

Ariel Noyman's work on CityScope selected for the Young Talent exhibition at Hebei International Industrial Design Week (HIDW)

The “HIDW Young Talent” exhibition addressed three topics: Manufacturing of Tomorrow, Future Craft, and City Catalyst.
Project Research

[bike] swarm

As bikes navigate city streets after dark, they are often equipped with lights. The lights make the bikes visible to cars or other bikers, …
Publication Research

CityScopeAR: Urban Design and Crowdsourced Engagement Platform

Noyman, Sakai, Larson 2018. CityScopeAR: Urban Design and Crowdsourced Engagement Platform. CHI 2018, 4,2007
Archived
Project Research

Streetchange

Computer vision uncovers predictors of physical urban change

Archived
Post Research

City Science team wins Best Student Paper Award at Computing Conference 2020

Congratulations to City Science researchers Alex Berke, Jason Nawyn, Thomas Sanchez Lengeling, and group head Kent Larson!
Project Research

Reversed Urbanism

Predicting Urban Performance through Behavioral Patterns in Temporal Telecom DataThis study explores a novel method to analyze diverse beha…
Archived
Project Research

AI, Automation, Labor, and Cities: How to map the future of work

Should workers worry about automation and AI?Many workers, policy makers, and researchers are asking themselves exactly this question. But …
Archived
Archived
Project Research

Moral Machine

The Moral Machine is a platform for gathering a human perspective on moral decisions made by machine intelligence, such as self-driving car…
Archived
Project Research

ChampScope

Virtual CityScope Champs-Élysées is an interactive and immersive platform that explores the future of Paris’ most important street.
Publication Research

Urban Swarms: A new approach for autonomous waste management

A. L. Alfeo et al., "Urban Swarms: A new approach for autonomous waste management," 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Montreal, QC, Canada, 2019, pp. 4233-4240.
Project Research

The Deep Image of the City

How do you image a city that doesn't exist? DeepScope is a novel platform for interactive, real-time, and setup-less urban design visu…
Project Research

CityScope Volpe

CityScope Volpe is demonstrating most of the urban planning, analysis, and prediction features developed for the CityScope project. The sit…
Project Research

Aalto Campus-as-a-Service Simulations

How can we get more value from the same buildings? Cities contain many different resources and spaces and typically, these resources o…
Publication Research

Reversed urbanism: Inferring urban performance through behavioral patterns in temporal telecom data

Noyman, A., Doorley, R., Xiong, Z., Alonso, L., Grignard, A., & Larson, K. (2019). Reversed urbanism: Inferring urban performance through behavioral patterns in temporal telecom data. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 46(8), 1480–1498. https://doi.org/10.1177/2399808319840668