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Live/Work Symmetry in Kendall Square

Media Lab City Science

Course: MIT MAS.552 City Science: Modeling Low-carbon Entrepreneurial Cities
Instructor: Kent Larson, Luis Alonso
Collaborator: Carolina Fonseca, Chunfeng Yang, Walter Zesk
Date: Feb.-May., 2022

Climate change presents an existential threat to human civilization, and the IPCC report of August 2021 sounds “a death knell for coal and fossil fuels before they destroy our planet." With cities generating more than 70% of current global CO2 emissions, and with 90% of future population growth occurring in urban areas, it is a societal imperative that cities rapidly transition to a low-carbon future. In addition, a rapid transition to a hybrid form of work that emphasizes entrepreneurship will impact how we conceive of central business districts, office buildings, housing, public spaces, and services.

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This workshop is a rapid-fire, high-level exploration of how to model socio-economic-environmental interventions that could enable low-carbon (ultimately zero-carbon), entrepreneurial cities, using the MIT-Kendall Square district as the case study. We will focus on two questions:
• What would be required for MIT-Kendall Square to achieve zero-carbon in 20 years?
• Can social performance be simultaneously increased to create a model entrepreneurship community?

KEYWORDS:
Live/work symmetry, Low carbon, Socio-economic entrepreneurialship, Physical intervention, Kendall square 

OBJECTIVES

To explore key challenges and opportunities related to:
Current Performance: calculating the environmental and social performance of the district, with an emphasis on CO2 emissions of people who live and work in the district.
Urban Interventions: modeling the impact of interventions that may dramatically reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
Renewable Energy: modeling the deployment of non-fossil fuel energy sources from solar to future fusion. 
Urban Performance: estimating the resulting impact of proposed solutions on the environmental and social performance of the district.

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Challenges are:

Live-work symmetry. What is the optimal configuration and mix of functions for high-performance, livable, entrepreneurial urban communities and how can this be achieved?
• Local amenities access. Few U.S. communities provide the assets required for daily living in close proximity to where people live (shopping, schools, culture, healthcare, daycare, recreation, etc.).
• Local food production. Significant CO2 emissions are from food-related supply chains and meat-based diets. How can new developments in industrial-scale hydroponic/aeroponic food production, cultured meats, and other innovations dramatically lower CO2 emissions?
• Community mobility. A large percentage of urban CO2 emissions is from commuting. Market forces and current approaches to public policy does not typically lead to diverse and affordable housing near places of employment. What innovation would result in live/work symmetry and net-zero commuting?
• Fusion-ready cities. Power to the grid in MA is almost 80% fossil fuel. What innovations in distributed high-density power could result in zero-carbon power to the district (micro-nuclear, small nuclear reactors, fusion) - and how to achieve this?
• Compact-high-performance-transformable housing. How high-performance buildings can reduce CO2 emissions with new models for housing?

Research Framework
Live/Work Symmetry in Kendall Square
 

01 Kendall Square Now
 

An assessment of the current state of kendall population.

Whose commute is generating the most CO2?

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Challenges:

How to attract people who are now commuting to live in kendall square?

How to provide necessary living space for those who are commuting?

How to provide affordable housing for those who commute to kendall

square and cannot afford to live in kendall square?

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Research question:

What is the most impactful way to reduce CO2 with live-work symmetry in kendall square?

02 Mobility Decision
 

How do we most effificiently intervene to inflfluence mobility decisions to drive migration

towards live work balance?

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Migration Motivation:

- Analyze the mobility decision making process

- Apply the effects of Lifetime Mobility Profiles on urban housing tenure (simulated with agent based model)

- Research age and family size profiles in existing high density live-work balanced communities

- Propose Design/Policy/Development interventions that target high leverage segments of the Lifetime Mobility Profile

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Experiment:

- Simple economic disparity model as a base -- agents are moving around within a changing value landscape
- Adding age and mobility-threshold preference to agent characteristics, using weibull function to model mobility-threshold-profile
- Adding age target as input to services providing value to agents unevenly
- Reporting average tenure generated by services

03 Development Guidance
 

Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) managing real estate ibuying system.

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Intervention:

- Target high impact age bracket
- Amenity Inventives can target anticipated/future benefits
- Price is still the greatest barrier to entry

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Price = Broken Market Dynamics:

- Demand Inelastic to price due to long term mortgages and belief in appreciation
- Location scarcity do to unresponsive development creates supply inelasticity

 

Price Elasticity of Demand:

- Reduce reliance on future capital gains through high percentage municipal gains tax
- Redistribute community equity (appreciation should benefit all residents, not just those that can get mortgages)
- Create Price floor with iBuying program, reducing risk

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Simple System Dynamics Model:

- Impact of Minimum Project Size
- Impact of price elasticity of Demand
- Impact of price elasticity of Supply
- Impact of Delayed Supply Response

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Responsive Development:

- Reduce development risk with Municipal iBuying
- Align development with community needs with C.A.O. tokenized incentive system
- Reduce minimum development scale with standardized vertical structure and vertical circulation
- Reduce development delay for approvals/financing

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CAO:
- Community Autonomous Organization (CAO) managing a community based Real Estate Investment Fund
- Local investment promotes informed investing and aligned values
- Blockchain based system allows fluid exchange between different types and quantities of value 
- Blockchain based decision-making allows fluid information exchange informing systems of value exchange

04 Urban Forms and Scenarios
 

What forms with these scenarios take in the city? 
What will cambrige look like with these interventions?

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Neighborhood Prototype:

- Single-zoned neighborhood (users are separate from each other)

- Mixed-zoned neighborhood (users are adjacent and connected, reducing the overall footprint)

- Mixed-use, compact neighborhood (users are mixed, ground floor is activated, overall footprint and building heights are reduced, and additional public space is created in a vertical fashion)

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Planning Strategy:

- Site explore based on Machine Learning to find the optimal results of neighborhood layout

- Massing design based on user profile

- Environmental attribute analysis

- Economical attribute analysis

View the full report

Research Publication
Live/Work Symmetry in Kendall Square
 

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Download the research article

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