Workshops

CityScienceLab@Shanghai

Friday, October 28 - 10:30am to 12 pm ET

In cities all around the world, the current urban development has problems such as value extraction, inequality, and lack of transparency. How can we develop a new process for prosocial urban development, which preserves value in the community, build amenities that the community demands, support the local economy, reduce inequality, and be transparent and trusted?

In light of solving these challenges, members from City Science Network in MIT and Shanghai formed SoCity DAO. SoCity is a non-profit decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that aims to establish an ecosystem that promotes prosocial, pro-sustainability behaviors in cities with decentralized incentive policies. The core of the SoCity DAO is to quantify each individual or organization’s social or sustainable value contribution according to their behavior, monetize and recognize the contribution, and then reward the users to further strengthen the positive feedback loop.

In this workshop, participants will be introduced to the technologies and research works around blockchain, smart-contract, token economies, decentralized governance, urban simulations, and algorithmic zoning. Then participants will form teams to explore noval, prosocial, decentralized urban development processes that enables the community members to gain leverage over traditionally more powerful stakeholders such as real estate developers; to grow their ownership and wealth in the community; to coordinate how to fund and use community endowments; to gain the tools and insights to predict the impact of their decisions; to define membership and relevance in a more fine-grain way; to improve data privacy and operation efficiency and transparency; and many more, in both context of Cambridge and participants' home cities. SoCity team will prepare data and tools such as urban simulation to facilitate the exploration for both economics and governance purposes.

Presented by the team from Tongji University College of Design and Innovation led by Yongqi Lou.

CityScienceLab@Guadalajara

Friday, October 28 - 10:30am to 12pm ET

The current state of the food supply is alarming. Food production is being altered by unusual climate events such as severe droughts and floods. Distribution has been made difficult due to adverse conditions such as inaccessibility or unfortunate events like the war and rising fuel prices are making some products less and less affordable. In addition, food often goes to waste as there is a lack of means for preservation.

In this workshop, participants will explore how eco-technologies like solar dehydrators can help communities to overcome the problem of food scarcity. We will learn about the advantages of such technologies especially in communities, like Lomas del Centinela, where there is no infrastructure for electricity supply. Teams will learn how to construct a solar dehydrator for use in their home country or context.

Presented by the team from the University of Guadalajara led by Mayra Gamboa.

CitySciencelab@Taipei

Friday, October 28 - 10:30am to 12pm ET

On September 21st, 1999, the 9/21 earthquake occurred in Taiwan, causing tremendous damage. After the immediate rescue works, people were facing the challenge of rebuilding under complex post-earthquake conditions in the aspect of environment, economy, and society. A similar situation is taking place in current Ukraine since the war began. Taiwan, after years of effort, ultimately, has developed an effective strategy based on the socio-environmental theory—urban acupuncture.

In this workshop, the NTUT team will introduce Taiwan’s experience and further discover a way to adapt the strategy to Kharkiv and other places in Ukraine’s future rebuilding projects and beyond.

Presented by the team from the National Taipei University of Technology led by Leehter Yao.

MIT City Science & Norman Foster Foundation

Friday, October 28 - 1 to 2:30pm ET

Teams explore a data-driven model for cities that could limit emissions while improving the quality of life and the economic, social, and environmental opportunities for residents. Learning from the Kendall Square neighborhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we review opportunities for the Barabashova Market in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Teams create and review concepts for a community unconstrained by legacy infrastructure including low-carbon communities, livability and public health, equity, and a Science Neighborhood framework.

This workshop is a hands-on exploration of proposed urban plans and will review options for a tangible decision-making platform to solve spatial challenges.

Presented by the team from MIT City Science and the Norman Foster Foundation.

CityScienceLab@Toronto

Friday, October 28 - 1 to 2:30pm ET

In just the last decade, personal data has become the foundation of a trillion-dollar global industry. The sector has grown in wild-west fashion, as the pace of technology has outstripped citizens’ understanding of how their data is used and regulators’ ability to govern the market. Consumer mistrust, government action and market competition are converging forces towards a clear endpoint: citizens and communities will exercise full control over their personal data, including what they agree to share and who they share it with. During this workshop, we will explore how these new dynamics can contribute to community-level economic growth.

We will demonstrate and discuss some of the researched practices to store, share and synthesize community data to enable micro-economic growth. We will review data sharing dynamics between households, small businesses and other entities on a community level and we will discuss how such dynamics can be used to introduce healthy competitive behaviors between communities to track and advance ESG Goals.

In this workshop, we will also be introducing a case study and participating in a design and analyses process to critique our thinking process.

Presented by the team from Ryerson University led by Hossein Rahnama.

CityScienceLab@Andorra Research and Innovation

Friday, October 28 - 1 to 2:30pm ET

In 2023, Andorra hopes to become the first country-sized Biosphere Reserve under UNESCO's Man and Biosphere programme through the promotion of greater balance between economic development and biodiversity conservation.

How could this framework impact society beyond its original mandate? How can a Living Lab generate innovative solutions to citizens and businesses keeping the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals in mind? How can these outcomes be measured? How do we create engagement among Academia, Public Administration, Business and Citizens to catalyze these changes? What Key Performance Indicators and other metrics are needed to optimally manage those environments?

Presented by the team from the Andorra Research and Innovation led by Marc Pons.

CityScienceLab@Hamburg

Friday, October 28 - 3 to 4:30pm ET

In times of global crises and wars with global impact, democracy, and social cohesion are in danger - especially in cities. What should the design of digital tools look like that counterbalance these trends well? What kind of data collection is helpful - and what data is not collected? Can VR and AR be helpful in engaging people in co-creation who have little skill in reading plans? What kinds of games and gamification help with data collection? What happens when artists use these tools to create new access points? And, how can we make our knowledge available to communities in the global South - and what can we learn from them?

These and other questions are the focus of the presentation/workshop on current research and development projects of the City Science Lab Hamburg. We will present some up-to-date prototypes and discuss with participants the foundation of our work.

Presented by the team from HafenCity University led by Gesa Ziemer.

MIT City Science

Friday, October 28 - 3 to 4:30pm ET

Unconferences are participant-oriented workshop where the attendees suggest discussion topics of their own interest. Participants will be divided in different tables depending their interest in the topic. The format provides an excellent opportunity for researchers from diverse disciplines to interact with each other in an informal and flexible manner.

Presented by the MIT City Science group led by you!