MIT Media Lab

Beyond Smart Cities:
Emerging Design and Technology

Harness disruptive technology to create holistic, resilient, and sustainable cities

Duration

6 weeks,
excluding orientation

Effort

7-10 hours per week,
entirely online

Learning Format

Weekly modules,
flexible learning

Other Detail

Earn an MIT Media
Lab certificate

You'll walk away with:

1

Knowledge of how innovations in technology, design, planning, and policy can improve urban living and quality of life — at both a local and global level.

2

An understanding of how the application of disruptive technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT), and data analytics, can solve urban challenges.

3

Insight into the latest trends and research in the built environment, informed by industry experts, giving you a competitive business advantage in the urban solutions environment.

This course is for you if:

 

  • You are a technically minded entrepreneur, business leader, or investor in search of opportunities in sustainability, mobility, and innovation

  • You are an engineer, designer, architect, or urban planner focused on transit, energy, IT infrastructure, technology, data, or the environment

  • You are a public sector officer or leader looking for innovative ways to improve the quality of life in cities

Course curriculum

Module 1 Design and Technology for People-Centric Cities
Identify how global challenges can be best addressed at a community level.

Module 2 The Mobility Revolution and Urban Robotics
Propose a solution to mobility challenges by analyzing data about current mobility patterns, considering emerging transportation modes and their attributes.

Module 3 The Live-Work Transformation: Robotics, Prefabrication, and IoT Technology
Show methods of reimagining living and working spaces to make cities equitable, vibrant, and liveable.

Module 4 A Network of Neighborhoods: AI, Real-Time Simulation, and Emerging Systems
Develop an evidence-based process with metrics related to density, proximity, and diversity to enable more entrepreneurial and high-performance cities.

Module 5 Sustainable Communities: Local Production and Lower Consumption
Evaluate more effective land use, distributed energy systems, and alternative mobility modes as ways to lower a city's environmental footprint.

Module 6 Governance: Token Economies and Algorithmic Zoning for Prosocial Behaviors
Draft an outline of new governance models, behaviors, and emerging technologies to facilitate a healthier, high-functioning community.

Topics covered in this course

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Your Faculty Director

Kent Larson

Director, City Science Group, MIT Media Lab

Larson’s research focuses on developing urban interventions that enable more entrepreneurial, liveable, high-performance districts in cities. To that end, his projects include advanced simulation and augmented reality for urban design, transformable micro-housing for millennials, mobility-on-demand systems that create alternatives to private automobiles, and Urban Living Lab deployments in Hamburg, Andorra, Taipei, and Boston.

Larson and researchers from his group received the ‘10-Year Impact Award’ from UbiComp 2014. This is a ‘test of time’ award for work that, with the benefit of hindsight, has had the greatest impact over the previous decade.

Larson practiced architecture for 15 years in New York City, with design work published in Architectural Record, Progressive Architecture, Global Architecture, the New York Times, A+U, and Architectural Digest. The New York Times Review of Books selected his book, Louis I. Kahn: Unbuilt Masterworks (2000), as one of that year’s 10 best books in architecture.

“A well-timed course exploring the most pressing urban problems and very relevant in post-pandemic recovery as we transition to a new normal. Insightful learning materials, captivating lectures, and an amazing peer-level interaction all concatenated into one of the most enriching experiences I have had.”

Nidhi Tandon
Director, East Brunswick FIRST Inc.

An online education that sets you apart

This MIT Media Lab online short course is delivered in collaboration with online education provider GetSmarter. Join a growing community of global professionals, and benefit from the opportunity to:

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Gain verifiable and relevant competencies and earn invaluable recognition from an international selection of universities and institutions, entirely online and in your own time.

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Enjoy a personalized, people-mediated online learning experience created to make you feel supported at every step.

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Experience a flexible but structured approach to online education as you plan your learning around your life to meet weekly milestones.

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