Browse the latest news and media from the Sustainable Urbanization Lab below:

Archive
Lacey Cochran Lacey Cochran

SUL/Harvard CGA collaborative paper accepted to Scientific Data

SUL researcher paper "Twitter Sentiment Geographical Index Dataset" was just accepted by the journal Scientific Data. Authored by Yuchen Chai (MIT DUSP/EECS master’s graduate, SUL researcher), Devika Kakkar (Harvard Center for Geographic Analysis, our collaborator), Juan Palacios and Siqi Zheng. It is a major research outcome of our “Global Sentiment” research theme in the past four years. The authors collaborated with Harvard CGA.

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MIT Climate Nucleus' inaugural Fast Forward Faculty Grant
Lacey Cochran Lacey Cochran

MIT Climate Nucleus' inaugural Fast Forward Faculty Grant

Siqi Zheng is a MIT Fast Forward Faculty Fund recipient. She has formed a cohort and over the course of two years, this cohort will come together regularly (e.g., monthly) for climate leadership and faculty development and for networking. Ideally this will enable them to serve as climate ambassadors across the Institute, helping to identify new opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration.

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Net-Zero Homes and Housing Affordability
Lacey Cochran Lacey Cochran

Net-Zero Homes and Housing Affordability

Joint research project with the construction management department at Wentworth Institute of Technology (WIT), sponsored by Home Builders & Remodelers Association of Massachusetts (HBRAMA)

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Lacey Cochran Lacey Cochran

Financial Modeling of Building Decarbonization

Paper, “Quantifying the financial value of building decarbonization technology under uncertainty: Integrating energy modeling and investment analysis” on the financial modeling of building decarbonization just got accepted by the journal Energy and Buildings, a top journal in the building technology and building energy field.

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SUL Researcher Wins Outstanding Thesis Award
Lacey Cochran Lacey Cochran

SUL Researcher Wins Outstanding Thesis Award

SUL research assistant, Maria Jimena Muzio’s thesis won DUSP’s Outstanding MCP Thesis Award for her thesis, “Understanding Housing Supply under Stringent Energy-efficiency Regulations”.

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Lacey Cochran Lacey Cochran

SUL paper accepted to Urban Studies

The paper “The Impact of Human Capital and Housing Supply on Urban Growth” has been accepted by the journal Urban Studies. This is a top journal in the urban studies area.

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Yichun Fan awarded prestigious MIT Martin Fellowship
Lacey Cochran Lacey Cochran

Yichun Fan awarded prestigious MIT Martin Fellowship

The selection of Martin Fellows is highly competitive. In Yichun’s Award Letter, the Committee had high praise, “Congratulations on this honor, which reflects your strong academic and research accomplishments, and most importantly, your dedication to advancing sustainability for humanity and the natural world.”

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UBC Urban China Conference with Harvard University
Lacey Cochran Lacey Cochran

UBC Urban China Conference with Harvard University

To what extent has planning guided China’s urbanization? Have plans driven urban development or have the cities we observe today developed in opposition to planning? These questions were discussed at the Harvard University / MIT UBC Urban China Conference co-organized by MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab in March.

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MIT News features SUL Journal Paper on Extreme Heat
Lacey Cochran Lacey Cochran

MIT News features SUL Journal Paper on Extreme Heat

Extreme Heat Affects Habits of Daily Life - The Nature Scientific Reports paper, “Intraday Adaptation to Extreme Temperatures in Outdoor Activity” (by Yichun Fan, Jianghao Wang, Nick Obradovich, and Siqi Zheng) was featured on MIT News…

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SUL Researcher Alejandro Echeveria wins the MIT Energy Hackathon
Lacey Cochran Lacey Cochran

SUL Researcher Alejandro Echeveria wins the MIT Energy Hackathon

This year, the hackathon focused on the theme of “Decarbonizing the Built Environment”. Alejandro and his team (including Allie Shepard TPP ’23, Zoe Le Hong BT ’24, and Dominic Co March ’24) placed first overall with their tool that uses optimization algorithms and building energy modeling to help building owners retrofit their building. Judges of the competition included MIT faculty as well as industry executives from the energy space…

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The consumer city crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic
Sustainable Urbanization Matías Williams Sustainable Urbanization Matías Williams

The consumer city crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic

Since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, I have been focused on understanding the impacts of this virus on people’s behavior, mainly in consumer cities. Several studies have looked for social patterns changes and what the “new normal” would look like over the past two years. We decided to use the same methodological approach that we have used for several of my research projects: a very well-defined theoretical framework that supports our hypotheses through the thorough analysis of large datasets. Today, I want to share with you one of my latest papers: “Demand for Social Interactions: Evidence from the Restaurant Industry during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” which was recently published in the Journal of Regional Science.

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