2020 City Science Summit
Workshops
The 2020 City Science Summit workshops are listed below. This includes a description of the workshop content, the workshop host, and a video of the workshop when applicable.
Oct 7, 2020
e-Learning WITHOUT Inequality
Understanding barriers that low-income communities face when transitioning to online learning, and seek collaboration and ideas to create more equitable learning opportunities.
Technological transference is a worldwide issue, especially in developing countries. This problem is even more challenging in informal communities due to the lack of resources and even harder when it involves the education of children. In recent times, the pandemic has exacerbated these issues. For example, entire families need to be connected to various platforms for education often without internet access and with few economic resources. In this workshop, the City Science Lab @Guadalajara will present their recent work in collaboration with an informal community called Lomas del Centinela. Lomas del Centinela is unique as it is located within a municipality full of inequality, with the richest and poorest settlements. Participants will be introduced to a new methodology, have an opportunity to discuss the material and an opportunity to get involved.
Language: Spanish with English translation
Host: City Science Lab@Guadalajara
Theme: Resilient Communities, Education, Informality
Equity WITHOUT Zoning
Increasing housing equity and environmental sustainability through dynamic incentive policies including the creation of local economies that promote prosocial behaviors and aim to keep wealth in communities.
In this session, we will use the browser-based explorable explanations platform to establish an understanding of incentive policies and the impact on housing affordability, diversity, and various types of energy consumption. Facilitators will introduce the audiences to the concept of algorithmic zoning and dynamic incentive policy design. The audiences will then be given an interactive online agent-based simulation sandbox to explore and compare the impacts of traditional urban policies and dynamic, algorithm-optimized policies. Participants will report back on their impressions and findings.
Language: English
Host: CityScienceLab@Shanghai and MIT City Science
Theme: Resilient Communities, Urban Design
Oct 8, 2020
Delivery WITHOUT Contact
Lightweight mobility robots pose a new opportunity for last mile logistics.
The City Science Lab@Taipei Tech has collaborated on the Persuasive Electrical Vehicle (PEV) project since 2016. Inspired by one lightweight mobility mode, the team is now expanding on this work in new areas of research including human machine interaction and mobility experiences enabled by new technologies. In this workshop, the team will introduce a new project that looks to aid in last mile delivery. They will share their core technologies and current applications informing participants of their intentions to deploy this solution with a community first approach.
Language: English
Host: CityScienceLab@Taipei Tech
Theme: Mobility
Companies WITHOUT Offices
How virtual proximity, collaborative productivity and outcome-orientation define the new norm of work in the knowledge economy.
In many urban environments, a salient component of rebooting the economy is dependent on the scale of small businesses, especially the ones that are focused on the knowledge economy. In the lieu of Covid-19 pandemic, physical centrality in large urban areas and the desire to have large expensive offices as a driver for talent attraction/retention are lending their way to a new working culture in which result-orientation, decentralization and work-from-home standards are defining how the next generation of innovative startups thrive. As part of this workshop, we will explore how funding for large urban offices can be distributed among employees to empower them to turn their residential or community-affiliated locations into multi-use spaces that are more conducive to innovation. We will also explore algorithmic and persuasive models that reward employees based on the efficiency and quality of their work. For example, using our proposed model, a young employee's monthly mortgage payment can be fully covered by their employer due to the efficiency optimization that the employee has shown in that month. We will also be discussing challenges with permits, tax laws, regulations and zoning restrictions and how they can adapt to support the emergence of these new, decentralized, global and purpose-driven innovative entities.
Language: English
Host: CSL@Toronto and MIT City Science
Theme: Economies, Places of Work
Health WITHOUT Hospitals
A digital and more holistic approach to health and well being to improve community resilience.
In the coming decades society will face a massive challenge to provide equitable and efficient access to healthcare. Digital transformation presents an opportunity to alter, adjust and fix many of the current problems we see in our healthcare systems. Digitization can improve current services and provide access to more people including people in excluded or isolated communities. In addition, it can offer a more holistic approach to well-being that can include tracking and understanding of physical activity and nutritional habits and even an understanding of urban spaces and environmental factors that may be impacting your health. This workshop will explore innovative approaches to digitalization, data analytics, AI, and use of sensors, to design a more sustainable health-care system.
Language: English
Host: CityScienceLab@Andorra and the Andorra Innovation Hub
Theme: Health, Data Analytics, Urban Design
Collaboration WITHOUT Confusion
OPEN SPACE discussion on collaborative design, citizen engagement and mapping the unmapped.
How do our tools influence our collaboration, creativity and productivity? Join researchers from the CityScienceLab@Hamburg in an experimental, wild, and open parallel discussion. This session will begin with three short presentations highlighting the projects and collaborations of the HafenCity based lab. Then you will have an opportunity to decide your own topics for discussion. Bring your ideas, your collaborative spirit, and your big questions. The more the merrier as you join us in an open, virtual experience.
Time: 09:00 UTC-5 (GMT-5) (2.5 hours)
Language: English
Host: CityScienceLab@Hamburg
Format: Workshop
Theme: Places of Living, Education, Urban Design, Economies
Campuses WITHOUT Walls
Developing adaptive environments WITHOUT traditional boundaries for flexible use increasing vibrancy and usability.
How can we use the built environment most effectively? In this workshop we will illustrate how to develop adaptable, resilient and sustainable networks WITHOUT traditional boundaries of operating campus as a set of independent buildings. By developing campus as an ecosystem of various stakeholders, we can create environments that are more responsive to user and organizational needs while also being more adaptive in times of disruption. In this workshop, Jarmo Suominen will explore use of spaces at one of the campuses in the University of Guadalajara. Joined in conversation with experts and professionals in campus development, he will explore opportunities for more creative, adaptable and resilient uses of the campus ecosystem. Attendees to this workshop can view this conversation and learn more about these research questions and the work of the service platform Tractr Ltd.
The danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence itself; it is to act with yesterday's logic. - Peter F. Drucker
Language: Spanish and English
Host: CSL@Helsinki with TRACTR Ltd urban service platform
Theme: Places of Work, Education, Resilient Communities, Urban Design
Design WITHOUT Hierarchy
Designing spaces and places with and for the people that live in them.
Current urban spaces and systems are designed with a top-down approach. Though the planners and architects are experts in their fields, they often overlook the needs and desires of the people who live in the communities and the spaces they are designing for. In this workshop we pose ways to disrupt the current urban planning and architectural models by focusing on more human-centric and citizen enabled design decisions. How can we shift away from power dynamics of creator and observer? How will social participation change the way we design our cities? How can we explore ideas of collective invention? Can we empower our citizens to be experts by bringing knowledge of their community to the conversation? The CityScienceLab@Guadalajara proposes a possibility model to allow more people to engage in urban design processes. Workshop participants will hear from researchers and faculty in the space, and engage in discussion to tackle these big questions in an effort to design more equitable spaces.
Language: Spanish
Host: CityScienceLab@Guadalajara
Theme: Urban Design, Places of Living, Informality
Mexico WITHOUT Crime
Using data science to understand criminal trends.
In this session, María Salguero will give a detailed presentation on her data collection and research on femicides in Mexico. She will discuss data structure, data acquisition, and the hurdles that she has faced. She will also highlight specific data collected in Guanajuato, Mexico and what information she extrapolates from these details. This will be a 40 minute lecture followed by a Q and A.
Language: Spanish
Host: María Salguero
Theme: Data Networks
Cities WITHOUT Segregation
Road System Connectivity and Socio-Spatial Segregation in the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area
In this lecture, we will look at the role that the morphology of cities plays in facilitating socio-spatial segregation. In cities like the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area or GMA, the patterns of socio-spatial segregation are deeply embedded in the way the city was initially conceived, governed, planned, and developed, especially in the last sixty years. Different intervening factors, ranging from spatial to cultural, are responsible for expediting marginalization. We will take a journey through the most representing system of connectivity, the road network, to understand how the emergent patterns from the need to interact, trade and even marginalize through history, have resulted in a hierarchical structure of urban systems, where nested structures of communities, neighbourhoods, cities, regions and countries are observed worldwide. The spatial analysis will be linked to data collected through an in-depth interview process to more than fifty highly-involved actors of the urban ecosystem of Guadalajara from the private, public, and academic sector in 2019.
With Elsa Arcaute and Beatriz Aguirre
Hosted by the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL and the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex
Language: English
Host: Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL and the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex
Theme: Mobility
Communities WITHOUT Boundaries
El Punto - A holistic approach to community development
Located in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on the boarder with the United States, El Punto, a project designed by Herzog & de Mouron, is a community sanctuary that acts as a catalyst for the advancement of innovation, culture, spiritually and the arts. The project consist of a large scale collaboration between local communities, universities, enterprises, urban developers and NGOs. El Punto has the vision of tackling some of the Mexico’s most pressing challenges through the development of a holistic long term strategy of community transformation. This workshop will discuss key ideas, projects and interventions that have made El Punto a district and successful community development project.
Language: English
Host: Cecilia Levine and Sandro Landucci
Theme: Urban Design
Bits WITHOUT Brix
A hands-on introduction to building CityScope modules.
Join researchers for an introductory session on using python to build a CityScope module. Attendees will use Google CoLab to write a CityScope module using "brix," a new library being developed by the City Science group at the MIT Media Lab. This workshop will involve hands-on programming. Participants should have basic programming knowledge, preferably in python. Setting up a local python dev environment is not required, as attendees will use the Google Collaboratory project.
Time: 12:30 UTC-5 (GMT-5) (1.5 hours)
Language: English
Host: MIT City Science
Format: Workshop
Theme: Data Networks, Urban Design, Mobility
Oct 9, 2020
Governance WITHOUT Bureaucrats
Community scale organization and development post Covid19 - for health, economic and social well being.
The Covid-19 pandemic has been devastating worldwide. Among the people hardest hit, one billion people live in informal settlements and millions more live in high-density communities with outdated infrastructure. In addition, our future remains uncertain as we anticipate additional crises from climate change. Can we enable self-governing communities that can more effectively manage local needs than our current governments? In this session, we will explore post-Covid19 community regeneration using novel technologies to enable self-governance and efficient community management systems. We will consider intelligent buildings that offer feedback on usage and potential risks, platforms for information sharing between communities in need and options for users to participate in governance encouraged through the use of VR and AR experiences.
With guest speakers Ying LONG, Associate Professor at Tsinghua University and Daizong LIU, Director of WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities.
Language: English
Host: CityScienceLab@Shanghai and MIT City Science
Theme: Resilient Communities, Health, Urban Design, Informality
Societies WITHOUT Fragility
Kent Larson, Sandy Pentland and John Clippinger discuss opportunities and research to help realize the vision of cities as a network of healthy, high-functioning, resilient communities.
In response to the pandemic and climate change - and the inequities that both have revealed - there is a growing interest in building more resilient communities that can adapt and grow stronger when faced with the inevitable challenges in the future. In this session, Kent Larson, Sandy Pentland and John Clippinger will present new research to help realize the vision of cities as a network of healthy, high-functioning, resilient communities. Research themes include: urban programming, dynamic algorithmic zoning, ESG resilient community metrics, data exchanges, and computational law.
Time: 08:00 UTC-5 (GMT-5) (1.5 hours)
Language: English
Host: MIT City Science and the MIT Media Lab Human Dynamics group
Format: Lecture with Q and A
Theme: Resilient Communities
Knowledge WITHOUT Data
Creating a crowd-sourced metric to understand informality, by and for the people in informal communities.
Most current publications outline informality using metrics that are incomplete and undercounted. In addition, qualities of informal communities can vary greatly from country to country. Therefore, informality is difficult to understand and quantify, which makes it even harder to comprehend. To better understand and study informal settlements and communities, the team at MIT City Science has developed a taxonomy of informality. This taxonomy is further understood using a series of qualitative and quantitative questions that are answered by the stakeholders to understand both the strengths of each community and their challenges . Moreover, since those who live and work in these communities are the true experts, this crowd-sourced local definition is more accurate and informative. In this workshop, we will examine how to combine and weigh the data collected from the platform of the Power of Without. We will take Lomas del Centinela as a case study to test the accuracy of current indicators and have an opportunity to discuss new indicators and explore other possibilities. This workshop is a collaboration with IDB - The Inter-American Development Bank.
Time: 09:30 UTC-5 (GMT-5) (2 hours)
Language: Spanish with English translation
Host: MIT City Science
Format: Workshop
Theme: Urban Design, Informality
Workshop Recap
We review some of the highlights and content from our 2020 City Science Summit Guadalajara - The Power of WITHOUT. This video is in both Spanish and English