Developing Responsive Cities

MIT Media Lab’s Professor Kent Larson gives an urban development keynote on the creation of responsive cities. Larson looks to to find a functional model for cities, and not on the obsolete model of being used from the 1950s and 1960s. To Larson, the city of the future is a place for people; the problem now is to figure out a way to have all the benefits of cities without the negative aspects such as congestion, pollution and disease.

Looking back to cities before the car, Larson believes in creating better mobility systems for urban areas. He believes that solutions such as shared use vehicles for at least four people instead of one can also help the problem at hand. Currently, Larson is working on developing a vehicle that operates on bike lanes, stating that they will be, "accessible to elderly, disabled, women in skirts, business people, and address the issues of energy, congestion, mobility, aging, and obesity simultaneously."

Simply stated, Larson believes that there is a need for creating cities that optimize land usage to solve many contemporary urban problems.