Dear colleagues,

Over the next two decades, the UN expects that we need to accommodate new homes for 1.7 billion city dwellers. There is an undeniable need for concepts and solutions that lead to more sustainable urban growth, concepts that work across a range of climates and cultures. What are those solutions? Are there good examples? How can we evaluate them on a large scale? What role can computer based environmental performance analysis play in this context?

It is my pleasure to invite you to an all-day symposium on Sustainable Urban Design - Case Studies and Design Workflows on May 6th 2013 at MIT. The symposium is supported by the MIT Energy Initiative, MIT's new Center for Advanced Urbanism and the German American Chamber of Commerce Inc. During the morning session speakers from practice and academia will present examples and workflows of how to implement measures of sustainability in their projects. During the afternoon session we will be presenting Umi, our new urban modeling platform to evaluate operational energy use, daylighting, outdoor comfort and walkability at the neighborhood level. Umi has been extensively used in two graduate level classes at MIT and Harvard and student projects resulting from these classes will be presented in a poster sessions in the late afternoon. During the closing discussion we hope to develop a better understanding of the role computational design tools may play in the transition to more sustainable urban planning practices.

If you decide to attend, please RSVP by April 15th.

Best regards,

Christoph Reinhart
PS: The full agenda will be online shortly.