SENSEable Cities: Exploring Urban Futures

Since 2003, MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory has been investigating how emerging digital technologies can be employed to make cities more livable, sustainable and efficient. We recognize that the digital revolution has lent our cities a new layer of functionality and that now is the time to explore how sensors, cellphones, micro-controllers and networks of other handheld devices can be used to more effectively manage city infrastructure, optimize transportation, analyze our environmental impact and foster new communities.

In this, the first retrospective of the lab’s work, we have chosen 15 past projects that represent the potentials of this new world of pervasive computing. A collection of works from MoMA, Venice Biennale, Expo 2008, and Design Museum Barcelona. The work ranges from a pollution-sensing e-bike, to tiny sensors that can detect the final journey of trash in the waste removal system, and from real time visualizations of calling patterns during Obama’s Inaugural speech to a new smart building from the London 2012 Olympics.