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Missives from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

10/23/2026

In a recent pre-print, DUSP doctoral student Ashley Vicary examines how climate change shapes international migration, ultimately finding that, in the world’s poorest countries, unexpectedly hot months make people less likely to leave — not more. Increased heat seems to take away the means for people to move. The findings complicate the common image of “climate refugees” fleeing a warming world: for the poorest, heat may trap people in place rather than push them out.

Read more via the MIT Center for Real Estate Working Paper Series: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7609141

10/22/2026

DUSP student Priyanka Salunkhe (MCP ‘27) has been awarded a 2026–2027 MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design Fellowship. Her research focuses on design strategies that safeguard water-adjacent communities from displacement in Bengaluru, India, as a rapidly changing climate reshapes the city’s lakes and stormwater drains.

Guided by Professor Lawrence Vale’s framework of urban design-politics, her work examines how waterscape rejuvenation projects in Bengaluru create spatial regimes that let powerful actors dispossess communities and impose singular territorial logics. Those displaced are frequently the most socially and economically vulnerable, yet their ways of life have long sustained the ecological health of these waters. Using design as a tool for justice, Priyanka’s work proposes an alternative vision that builds on how these communities already live, holds their many lived realities together, and re-establishes their relationship with water.

This research is currently featured in the inaugural Occupancy exhibition, under the title “Margins to Mainstream,” at the MET Warehouse in Cambridge, MA. On view through fall 2026. MIT School of Architecture + Planning

Learn more on the DUSP website: dusp.mit.edu/news/priyanka-salunkhe-awarded-2026-2027-tata-center-fellowship

10/22/2026

Great story about MIT Farm, featuring participation from both MIT Department of Architecture students and DUSP students! Read on MIT News: https://news.mit.edu/2026/mit-farm-growing-1013

10/14/2026

Congratulations to the DUSP faculty members who received promotions this fall! 🎉

Read more on the DUSP website: https://dusp.mit.edu/news/dusp-faculty-receive-promotions-fall-2026

10/13/2026

Congratulations to the winners and honorable mentions of this year’s MIT Prize for Open Data (hosted by MIT Libraries and the MIT School of Science), which includes several members of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) community.

The MIT Senseable City Lab was well represented with a team led by Åse Håtveit, Orlando Closs, and Titus Venverloo for their winning project called “Sensing Garden" — an effort to address biodiversity loss in urban environments using camera-based sensors and computer vision models to detect and classify insects. Insights from this research aim to inform urban planning and biodiversity conservation strategies.

Come celebrate this year’s honorees during the Open Data @ MIT event on October 20, 3pm ET in Hayden Library.

Read more on the DUSP website: dusp.mit.edu/news/duspers-recognized-during-2026-mit-prize-open-data

10/09/2026

MIT PhD student JS Tan co-wrote with Clarissa Redwine the book "Against Tech Oligarchy," on the rise and fall of the tech worker labor movement of the past decade. The book chronicles how tech workers organized themselves, effective strategies they used, and effects the movement and tech d...

10/08/2026

This fall semester, the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) welcomes Alex Cabral as Assistant Professor of Environmental Health and Sociotechnical Systems, and Monica Rhodes as a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Scholar.

Alex shares her appointment with DUSP and the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society. She is the director of the SEED Lab, which works with communities to design, develop, and deploy sensing and data infrastructure for environmental health and social wellbeing.

Professor Holly Harriel will be Monica’s faculty host at DUSP, where she will work with the MIT CoLab on new initiatives focused on climate change, HBCUs, and AI.

Welcome to DUSP, both!

Read more on the DUSP website: dusp.mit.edu/news/dusp-welcomes-new-assistant-professor-and-mlk-visiting-scholar

10/05/2026

Check out this new book from our very own PhD student JS Tan! Read more of the story on MIT News — and attend the launch event at the MET Warehouse on October 26: https://news.mit.edu/2026/documenting-tech-worker-movement-0918

09/30/2026

Read more about this work via the recent MIT News story! https://news.mit.edu/2026/mit-transit-lab-to-develop-ai-platform-public-transit-agencies-0930

09/28/2026

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