Urban provision may not be the most exciting conversation topic , but it has a huge encroachment on many the great unwashed ’s daily lives . In an attempt to make this subject more accessible to the populace , MIT is using LEGO models to certify how different bus transit options would affect the residents of Boston .
TheMIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning , theChanging Places group at the MIT Media Lab , and theBarr Foundationhave collaborated to create an interactional LEGO replica of Boston ’s Dudley Square . Anoverhead projectionfills the role model with details like green space , sidewalks , and incite traffic . On one side of the replica is a second LEGO creation depicting a Boston street , and on the other side is a touchscreen that testify how dissimilar plans would affect certain areas .
FromOctober 7 - 14 , the public was invited to chit-chat the display at the Roxbury Innovation Center in Dudley Square and playact with the virtual city . Using the touchscreen , visitors could pink a specific surface area to see how many task could be reach from the selected head via a proposed public transit plan . They could also mess around with factors like routes and relative frequency of Department of Transportation modes , then keep an eye on how this affected their commute on the example .
Both public citizen and local policymakers were invited to try out with the playful urban provision prick . Not only did the engineering display the different tier of convenience that do with each change , it also illustrated how much each measure would cost . Chris Zegras , the project drawing card and a professor of transportation and urban planning at MIT , toldCity Labthat their “ ultimate objective lens is this idea of carbon monoxide - creation . possess producer and consumer turn nearly together in the production of a commodity create a better good . ” It may be operose to get people to concord about public policy , but an afternoon spent play with LEGOs is something everyone can get on board with .
[ h / metric ton : City Lab ]
