Kent Larson presents the work at MIT City Science and an Overview of the City Science Network

Global Cities, Local Solutions More than half the world’s population lives in urban areas which account for an estimated 76% of CO2 emissions from energy use. It is imperative that city officials act on climate change. These actions will not only decrease emissions, but also improve aging infrastructure and make their areas more attractive to residents and businesses. The City Science Network is an international community of institutions and researchers that share the common goal of enabling more livable, equitable, and resilient communities. We propose that the grand transnational challenges of our era are best addressed in cities, one community at a time. ClimateTech is a conference hosted by MIT Technology Review in collaboration with City Science. Kent Larson is an architect, entrepreneur, and academic. He is Director of City Science at MIT Media Lab, with research focused on compact transformable housing, ultralight autonomous mobility systems, sensing and algorithms to recognize and respond to complex human behavior, and advanced modeling, simulation, and tangible interfaces for urban design. He has established an international network of affiliated City Science labs in Shanghai, Taipei, Ho Chi Minh City, Toronto, Hamburg, Andorra, and Guadalajara. He and researchers from his MIT lab have twice received the “10-Year Impact Award” from Ubicomp: a “test of time” recognition of work that, with the benefit of hindsight, has had the greatest impact. Kent’s projects have been presented at the Cooper Hewitt Museum in NYC and the Venice Biennale of Architecture. Kent’s book, Louis I. Kahn: Unbuilt Masterworks, was selected as one of the Ten Best Books in Architecture by the New York Times Review of Books. He is founder of L3Cities, which brings together metrics, data analytics, real-time simulation, and tangible interfaces to help cities and enterprises create more sustainable, equitable, and entrepreneurial communities. He is cofounder of ORI Living, an architectural robotics company to commercialize systems for dynamically reconfigurable spaces, and advisor to Butlr Technologies, SmartRE, evTS, and other MIT spinoff companies. Kent is on the Advisory Board of the Norman Foster Foundation. His online professional education course, "Beyond Smart Cities," is recognized as one of the best resources for those interested in future cities.