The MIT Senseable City Laboratory is a digital laboratory within MIT's City Design and Development group, within the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, which works in collaboration with the

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fi ...

. The lab aims to investigate and anticipate how digital technologies are changing the way people live and their implications at the urban scale.

History and description

Director Carlo Ratti founded the Senseable City Lab in 2004. Its

mission statement A mission statement is a short statement of why an organization exists, what its overall goal is, the goal of its operations: what kind of product or service it provides, its primary customers or market, and its geographical region of operation ...

says that it seeks to creatively intervene and investigate the interface between people, technologies and the city. The Lab's work draws on diverse fields such as

urban planning Urban planning (also called city planning in some contexts) is the process of developing and designing land use and the built environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as transportatio ...

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...

, design, engineering,

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

natural science Natural science or empirical science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer ...

and economics to capture the multi-disciplinary nature of urban problems and deliver research and applications that empower citizens to make choices to make a better liveable urban experience. Among the Lab's partners are a group of corporations, including

AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...

Audi Audi AG () is a German automotive manufacturer of luxury vehicles headquartered in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany. A subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group, Audi produces vehicles in nine production facilities worldwide. The origins of the compa ...

ENEL Enel S.p.A. is an Italian multinational manufacturer and distributor of electricity and gas. Enel was first established as a public body at the end of 1962, and then transformed into a limited company in 1992. In 1999, following the liberali ...

SNCF The Société nationale des chemins de fer français (, , SNCF ) is France's national State-owned enterprise, state-owned railway company. Founded in 1938, it operates the Rail transport in France, country's national rail traffic along with th ...

as well as cities such as

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

, and

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

. Projects have included "The Copenhagen Wheel", which debuted at the

2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, commonly known as the Copenhagen Summit, was held at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark, between 7 and 18 December. The conference included the 15th session of the Conference of the Partie ...

, "Trash_Track" shown at the

Architectural League of New York The Architectural League of New York is a non-profit organization "for creative and intellectual work in architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construct ...

and the

Seattle Public Library The Seattle Public Library (SPL) is the public library system serving the city of Seattle, Washington (state), Washington. Efforts to start a Seattle library had commenced as early as 1868, with the system eventually being established by the ci ...

, "New York Talk Exchange" featured in the MoMA The

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, and ''

Real Time Rome Real Time Rome is a 2006 exhibit by the MIT Senseable City Lab, directed by professor Richard Burdett. The project used anonymized cell-phone data from sponsor Telecom Italia's Lochness platform about telecom traffic and signal strength, as well ...

'', included in the 2006

Venice Biennale of Architecture The Venice Biennale of Architecture ( Italian: ''Mostra di Architettura di Venezia'') is an international exhibition showcasing architectural works from around the world, held in Venice, Italy, every other year. Originally held in even-numbered ...

. In 2010 the lab opened a new research center in Singapore as part of a $35 million MIT-led initiative on the Future of Urban Mobility.

Approach

The Senseable City Lab begins its project and research work with a vision for an urban future, or "urban demo". This vision is tailored to a particular city's needs and can be motivated by the challenges a place may be confronting, or by opportunities for providing new experiences or services due to advances in digital technologies. Urban demos are designed to be showcased at large public events and exhibitions to stimulate debate between citizens, public administrators, and industry. Following an urban demo, the Lab typically engages in more traditional academic research - analyzing the data that has been collected and producing research papers.

Achievements

Since 2004, the Senseable City Lab has grown rapidly reaching 35 completed projects by 2009 with a turnover of 63 researchers from all over the world. Lab researchers have produce
166 scientific publications
in high-impact academic journals such as "Eigenplaces: analysing cities using the space-time structure of the mobile phone network". The Lab's design work has been exhibited in some of the world's leading venues including the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

, MoMA The Museum of Modern Art, the 2008 Zaragoza World Expo, the Architectural League of New York, Design Museum Barcelona, the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the

MIT Museum The MIT Museum, founded in 1971, is part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It hosts collections of holography, technology-related artworks, artificial intelligence, architecture, robotics, maritime history, ...

. The Lab's work have been recognized in TIME Magazine's Best Invention of the Year 2007, Esquire Magazine's Best and Brightest 2008, Blueprint Magazine's List of 25 Who Will Change the World of Design in 2010, and Thames and Hudson's 2009 List of Innovators Shaping Our Creative Future. In January 2009, Director Carlo Ratti represented the Lab as a delegate to the

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental organization, international advocacy non-governmental organization and think tank, based in Cologny, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German ...

in Davos. In 2011, he presented at TED in Longbeach.

Treepedia

Treepedia is a Senseable City Lab project whose goal is to raise awareness of

urban forest Urban means "related to a city". In that sense, the term may refer to: * Urban area, geographical area distinct from rural areas * Urban culture, the culture of towns and cities Urban may also refer to: General * Urban (name), a list of peop ...

s. It uses digital vision techniques based on

Google Street View Google Street View is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides interactive panoramas from positions along many streets in the world. It was launched in 2007 in several cities in the United States, and has since expa ...

images. Its focus is on street trees rather than those in parks. The

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

library, stored on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

, includes all the Python programming code to allow anyone to use it to calculate tree cover (measured as Green View Index, or GVI) for their own city or region.

References

External links

MIT Senseable City Lab
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mit Senseable City Lab Massachusetts Institute of Technology Urban studies and planning schools