Dozens of major research labs dot the streets of Kendall Square, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, neighborhood in which MIT partially sits. But for Andres Sevtsuk’s City Form Lab, the streets of Kendall Square themselves, and those in other cities, are subjects for research.
Sevtsuk is an associate professor of urban science and planning at MIT and a leading expert in urban form and spatial analysis. His work examines how the design of built environments affects social life within them. The way cities are structured influences whether street-level retail commerce can thrive, whether and how much people walk, and how much they encounter each other face to face.
“City environments that allow us to get more things done on foot tend to not only make people healthier, but they are more sustainable in terms of emissions and energy use, and they provide more social encounters between different members of society, which is fundamental to democracy,” Sevtsuk says.
However, many things Sevtsuk studies do not come with much pre-existing data. While some aspects of cities are studied extensively — vehicle traffic, for instance — fewer people have studied how urban planning affects walking and cycling, which most city governments seek to increase.
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https://news.mit.edu/2024/street-smarts-thriving-city-spaces-andres-sevtsuk-1215