e-Planning: Qvo vadis, MIT-DUSP?

Moderator: Pedro Ferraz de Abreu

The e-Planning Seminar brought us already many issues and conceptual challenges, from Neighborhood knowledge to e-Democracy, from National community information infrastructure to Advanced technology trends in regional transportation, from Local institutional innovation to Social and ethical implications of the new technology. Before we proceed (next week, Nov. 7) with our guest sessions in our Seminar (Christian Jacques, Director of MassGIS; Bernard Marchand, Institut Fran�ais d'Urbanisme, U. Paris; Mike Batty, University College London; RenŽe Sieber, McGill University, Canada, and others), it is a good moment to discuss more in-depth some of the questions arising from these sessions and focus on our own on-going research agenda at DUSP and at MIT at large.

We are also happy to note that many students are asking for more time than the assigned for discussion. We listen to this feedback, and we hope this will be a good opportunity for interested students to bring their valuable input in this quest for "mapping" the novel and emerging field of 'e-Planning".

MIT-DUSP Faculty Panel

The Panel for this Friday is not restricted to the faculty listed below (the lists correspond to the faculty that were able to confirm their presence at this time). More information will be posted on e-Planning web site.

Phillip Thompson is Associate Professor of Urban Politics (DUSP). His research interests are Urban Politics, Race Relations, Labor and Local Economic Development, Community Organization. He teaches 11.402 Urban Politics: Race and Political Change (more information soon on the web site).

Langley Keyes is Associate Department Head of DUSP, Ford Professor of City and Regional Planning, Head of the Housing, Community, and Economic Development Group; and Chair of the MCP Program (Spring) . His research interests are History of Housing Policy, Community Development, Community Networks, Social Services and Housing ; History of federally assisted rental housing from 1961 to the present . Recent publications include "Housing and Social Capital" in Social Capital and Poor Communities, Saegert et. al editors, Russell Sage;"Beyond Housing" (with Avis Vidal) ; "The Role of City Hall in Community Development" (with Neil Mayer) The Urban Institute. Langley teaches 11.A22 Homelessness in America: The Past, Present and Future Policy Challenges; 11.401 Introduction to Housing and Community Development; 11.421 Housing and Human Services. He was Special Assistant for Policy Development, Massachusetts Executive Office of Community and Development, 1983-86 and Head of DUSP, 1974-78. Ê

Jane Fountain, visiting at DUSP this Fall, is Director of the National Center for Digital Government, co-chair of the Information, Technology and Governance Faculty Group, and an associate professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She is the author of Building the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change (Brookings Institution Press, 2001) which was awarded an Outstanding Academic Title 2002 by Choice, and Women in the Information Age (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming, 2003). Jane has served as a member of the governing body of the Social Science Research Council Committee on Information Technology, Global Cooperation, and International Security; the Research Advisory Board of the Internet Policy Institute; and the advisory board of MassConnect, an economic development e-government initiative in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

John de Monchaux is Professor of Architecture and Planning and Director of the SPURS Program. Former Dean, School of Architecture and Planning, 1981 to 1992. Prior to 1981 John was responsible for projects in Australia, Southeast Asia, the UK, Colombia, Canada, and the USA. His work included slum upgrading and new sites and services housing in the Philippines, and urban plans and environmental impact studies throughout Australia and New Zealand. From 1992 to 1996, he served as General Manager of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, a Geneva-based foundation concerned with the quality of architecture and urban conditions in the Muslim world. He is currently advising the Arriyadh Development Authority in Saudi Arabia on long term city development strategies, urban design and the programming and design of major public buildings. At MIT he teaches undergraduate subjects on the making of plans and cities and at the graduate level he co-teaches the urban design studio. His interests include urban design, implementation strategies, indicators and measures of city performance, and human issues in the developing world.

Joseph Ferreira Jr. is Professor of Urban Planning and Operations Research and Head of the Planning Support Systems Group, currently in transition to the "Urban Information Systems" cut-across area. His current research focus is on GIS and interactive spatial analysis tools for modeling urban spatial structure and land use and transportation planning interactions; sustainable information infrastructures for supporting urban and regional planning, decision support systems for assessing and managing risk . Joe's awards include 2002 Leadership Award from the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA). Recent publications include "Information Technologies that Change Relationships between Low-Income Communitie and the Public and Non-profit Agencies that Serve Them," Chapter 7 in High Technology and Low-Income Communities, MIT Press, 1997, Schon, Mitchell, Sanyal (editors); "Distributed GIS for Monitoring and Modeling Urban Air Quality," with C-H Yeang and Ayman Ismail, Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management, Venice, (1999). Joe is currently on leave (Fall 03-04).

Zhong-Ren Peng is Visiting Associate Professor of Urban Planning (Transportation and Land Use, Geographic Information Systems). Zhong-Ren current research interests focuses on advancing the understanding of the interactions between the transportation system and other elements of the urban system. He is particularly interested in the role of transportation systems in shaping land use patterns and urban form, and how transportation can be used as a means of achieving urban sustainability. The second focus of his research is on the use of advanced information technologies such as geographic information systems (GIS), intelligent transportation systems (ITS), and statistical models to improve the transportation planning process. Zhong-Ren recent Book: Internet GIS: Distributed Geographic Information Services for the Internet and Wireless Networks, published by John Wiley & Sons, March 2003.