MITx: Leveraging Urban Mobility Disruptions to Create Better Cities

Over the next 8 sessions, this course will explore a wide variety of topics that relate to emerging new mobility systems and learn how new mobility can be leveraged to address and promote equity, improve health outcomes, and increase accessibility. The course material is designed to have a global impact by taking advantage of an established network of academic partners and practitioners, each bringing relevant expertise and representing distinct empirical settings. The international nature of this course will allow you to gain multiple social perspectives and familiarity with transportation challenges and solutions from different parts of the world.

Guided by the Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities and taught by transportation professors from Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the United States, the course provides insights into urban mobility challenges and opportunities and how the emerging new mobility paradigm can be effectively leveraged to create better, more equitable cities. The course is led by a team including Chris Zegras (MIT), Jinhua Zhao (MIT), Carlos Pardo (NUMO), and mobility entrepreneur Robin Chase, and features interviews with preeminent entrepreneurs, city planners, community development experts, and mobility justice advocates.

Topics will include land use and urban form, new mobility business models, pricing, policy, technology, and data. We will likewise reflect on the importance of designing new mobility systems for equity, health, and the environment. Additionally, this third edition of the course will also address how the transportation field is responding to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

This course is recommended to professionals, government officials, and anyone else currently in the field of transportation or urban planning, but also is open to those interested in learning more about this topic.

The course team includes:

Chris Zegras, Ph.D., MIT

Robin Chase, M.S. (MIT), NUMO/Zipcar co-founder and former CEO

Natalia Barbour, Ph.D., MIT

Jinhua Zhao, Ph.D., MIT

Carlos Pardo, M.A. (LSE), NUMO

Francisco Pereira, Ph.D., Technical University of Denmark

Carlos Azevedo, Ph.D., Technical University of Denmark

Lynette Cheah, Ph.D., Singapore University of Technology and Design

Christo Venter, Ph.D., University of Pretoria (South Africa)

Ricardo Giesen, Ph.D., Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Andrew Salzberg, MUP & Loeb Fellow at Harvard University, Former Head of Transportation Policy at Uber

Course coordinator: John Devine, City Planning MIT

Guest interviews:

Yolisa Mashilwane (Uber South Africa); Ben Plowden (Transport for London); Onesimo Flores, Ph.D. (Jetty co-founder); Oscar Diaz (former mayor's advisor Bogota); Angie Palacios (Development Bank of Latin America); Marina Moscoso (Despacio); Andrei Greenawalt, J.D. (Via); Evan Gastman (Uber); Assaf Biderman (Superpedestrian); Harriet Tregoning (NUMO); Kimberly Driggins (Washington Housing Conservancy); Karilyn Crockett, Ph.D. (City of Boston and MIT); Dara Baldwin (Center for Disability Rights); Norman Garrick, Ph.D. (University of Connecticut); Michael Maness, Ph.D. (University of South Florida); David Zipper (Harvard Kennedy School); Warren Logan (City of Oakland); Katie Monroe (Transit App); and Tabitha Combs, Ph.D (UNC Chapel Hill)