School of Architecture and Planning

Lecturer Jim Aloisi speaks with CNN reporter Nathaniel Meyersohn about how Taylor Swift’s sold-out Eras Tour is impacting public transportation across the United States. “What Taylor Swift is doing, and I thank her for this — although I don’t know she intended to — is proving that if you give people better, reliable transit alternatives, they’ll take it,” says Aloisi. “They would prefer to do that than be stuck in soul-crushing traffic.”

Researchers at MIT have showed that “they could induce people to dream about a particular subject and that doing so helped them become more creative,” writes F.D. Flam for Bloomberg. “The findings should remind us that the line between productivity and resting is blurry — especially in creative endeavors,” writes Flam.

Prof. Carlo Ratti writes for Nikkei Asia about the importance of world expositions. “We do not need expos to showcase products across the world, but we do need them as playful, experimental sandboxes for testing ideas and trialing concepts,” writes Ratti. “Putting the focus on innovation would not require wholesale reinvention, but instead a re-emphasis on an element that has been part of expos since the beginning.”

Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Carlo Ratti emphasizes that in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic “urban areas need to fundamentally reweave their fabric to thrive in the era of flexible work: That means ending homogeneous zoning, promoting mixed-use developments, converting some offices into housing, and giving more space to arts and culture. We should recognize that the fundamental attraction of urban areas is the pleasure they provide to their residents — and that the affordability of housing needs to be seriously tackled.”

Writing for The Conversation, postdoc Ziv Epstein SM ’19, PhD ’23, graduate student Robert Mahari and Jessica Fjeld of Harvard Law School explore how the use of generative AI will impact creative work. “The ways in which existing laws are interpreted or reformed – and whether generative AI is appropriately treated as the tool it is – will have real consequences for the future of creative expression,” the authors note.  

New York Times reporter Natasha Singer spotlights the Day of AI, an MIT RAISE program aimed at teaching K-12 students about AI. “Because AI is such a powerful new technology, in order for it to work well in society, it really needs some rules,” said MIT President Sally Kornbluth. Prof. Cynthia Breazeal, MIT’s dean of digital learning, added: “We want students to be informed, responsible users and informed, responsible designers of these technologies.”

Undergraduate student Kathleen Esfahany speaks with GBH host Jeremy Siegel about her work discovering that people are most creative in the early stages of sleep. “The biggest finding and the thing that I think most people would relate to is that there was a nice effect of people being more creative after a nap, versus staying awake,” says Esfahany. “And I think this is well-corroborated by a lot of other studies, but this was just really exciting to be able to see.”

MIT and Harvard Medical School researchers have found that people are most creative when drifting off to sleep, reports WHDH. “The earliest stage sleep, we call that N1 stage sleep, just a brief nap in that period can really boost your creativity,” says undergraduate student Kathleen Esfahany.

On May 20^th, MIT students and community leaders gathered for “Hacking the Archive,” a hackathon aimed at addressing the wealth gap between Black and white residents of Boston, with a particular focus on housing as a generator of wealth, reports Kenneth Cooper for The Bay State Banner. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s no bigger challenge than the racial wealth gap,” explained Prof. Karilyn Crockett.

President Sally Kornbluth spoke with reporters from The Tech about her first months as president of MIT and her vision for her time leading the Institute. “MIT is a pretty decentralized place, so I am taking some time to get to know every nook and cranny,” says Kornbluth. She adds that in terms of her top priorities as president, “there's no question that climate change is at the very top of the list.”

Popular Science reporter Andrew Paul spotlights “Ways of Seeing” a documentary project that aims to create “extended reality” (XR) experiences of significant architectural locales in Afghanistan as part of an effort to preserve the country’s historical sites. Paul notes that the project combines “cutting edge 3D imaging, drone photography, and virtual reality combined with painstakingly detailed hand drawings.”

Writing for The New York Times, Prof. Carlo Ratti and Harvard Prof. Edward Glaeser emphasize that in order to, “create a city vibrant enough to compete with the convenience of the internet, we need to end the era of single-use zoning and create mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhoods that bring libraries, offices, movie theaters, grocery stores, schools, parks, restaurants and bars closer together. We must reconfigure the city into an experience worth leaving the house for.”

Researchers from MIT have found that, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, people are less likely to explore economically different parts of their home cities, reports Immanual John Milton for Bloomberg. “Fewer people are visiting attractions like museums, restaurants or parks that are outside their immediate mobility radius, and they’re spending less time among residents at different socioeconomic levels,” writes Milton.

MIT scientists have found that the earlier stages of sleep are key to sparking creativity and that people could be guided to dream about specific topics, further boosting creativity, reports Ingrid Wickelgren for Scientific American. “There is an objective and experimental link between incubation of some specific dream and postsleep creativity around that topic,” explains postdoc Adam Haar Horowitz. “This validates centuries of anecdotal reports from people who are in the creative space.”

Researchers from MIT and Harvard have found that short naps “can help the brain come up with creative solutions to tough problems,” reports Tony Ho Tran for The Daily Beast. “The phenomenon occurs during the very early stages of the sleep cycle known as hypnagogia, or the liminal space right between dozing off and being awake,” writes Tran.