MIT IAP Workshop Description

MIT IAP Workshop: Physical Computing in Urban Studies.
See class posts here.

January 20-23, 12-3pm
Limited to 16 participants
Attendance: Participants must attend all sessions

How can urban planners take advantage of the connected technologies that are starting to transform individual data to massively larger scales in time and space? From smartphones to wearables, from social media to quantified self, the aggregation and geo-location of data is becoming a major part of urban studies and planning.

In this workshop, we’ll look at how we can design and deploy with some of the most commonly hackable instruments– microcontrollers, sensors, and phones– that collect urban data. The workshop should give students the physical computing resources they need to deploy their own small data collection networks. Unique to this workshop, we’ll also consider the political, historical, and social underpinnings of using these sensors in the urban environment. Β The findings from these sessionsΒ will be carried forth to a spring 2015 class at NYU ITP called “The Quantified Self About Town.”

Student Requirements: Interest in electronics and sensors. Experience in building simple circuits is preferred but not required. Please bring an Arduino Starter Pack (or equivalent components), your iOS device if you have one, and your laptop to class.

Sponsor(s): Urban Studies and Planning
Category(s):Β Computer Hardware and Devices
Contact: Arlene Ducao, arlduc [at] mit.edu