The real-time city is real! As layers of networks and digital
information blanket our urban space, a new approach to the study
of the built environment is emerging. The way we describe and
understand cities is being radically transformed—as are the tools
we use to design them. The mission of the Senseable City Laboratory
is to anticipate these changes and study them from a
critical point of view. Not bound by the methodologies of a single field, the Lab – a research
initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – is characterized
by an omni-disciplinary approach.
It speaks the language of designers,
planners, engineers, physicists, biologists, mathematicians and social
scientists. Senseable is as fluent with Fortune 100 industry partners
as it is with metropolitan governments, individual citizens and
disadvantaged communities around the world. Through design and
science, the Lab develops and deploys tools to learn about cities—so
that cities can learn about us.