MIT-born initiative to encourage experimentation in cities.

1. Meet Dhaka
Only 1% of people have cars

2. Meet Zia
He loves his city and wants to find
a way to reduce congestion

3. Should he close
down the road?
In cities like Fazilka, road closure
seemed to counterintuitively reduce
congestion

4. Before After
He did once before
(but wasn’t sure if it worked)

5. To the naked eye, It looked like the experiment was a success – some of the
residents seemed to like it. But he couldn’t tell if it was a 5% or 50%
improvement. Also, maybe it was because it was a weekend. Maybe it was
because petrol prices went up recently. Maybe it was because of the big
cricket match the night before.
What he did know is that the car owners were not happy. He knew that it
cost the city 500,000 taka to monitor and close the street.
Better to do nothing.

6. Can the mayor of Dhaka run his city like an MIT
scientist managing a lab of experiments?

7. Cities have become too complicated to manage on gut instinct.
Measuring a city’s performance can help encourage
experimentation.
There are no effective, low cost means of quickly assessing a
city’s performance.

8. The Urban Launchpad employs human
and mobile sensors to deliver a
targeted, low-cost data service for
measuring the impact of city
experiments

9. A distributed
15 million users
subset of
carry a unique
smartphone
code
volunteers
marks their spot

10. city user scanner

11. walking,
happy
bus, CNG, Two-wheeler,
frustrated content angry

12. LIVING DHAKA
making the invisible visible
An initiative of the

13. Collaborators
Albert Ching is an aspiring urban innovator, a lifelong Hawaiian and former
Googler based in Mountain View, Hyderabad and Singapore. Albert is enduring
the frigid cold of Boston to help cities innovate, specifically by using the
proliferation of information technologies to solve transport problems in South
and Southeast Asia. He is a researcher for the Singapore-MIT Alliance’s Future
of Urban Mobility project. www.mrching.blogspot.com
Stephen Kennedy is a designer and artist formerly based in Atlanta with a
background in Industrial Design from Georgia Tech. At first a reluctant
transplant to Boston, Stephen has enjoyed trying to escape frigid New England
by working as a hybrid planner-designer on signage initiatives in New Orleans,
greenway planning in the Bronx, urban realm technology in Thessaloniki, and
participatory planning in Indonesia. His focus is on both physical planning and
spatial information design. www.stephenjameskennedy.com
Muntasir Mamun Imran is a nature lover, adventure-trekker, and an
experienced social entrepreneur from Bangladesh. He is the co-founder of
Kewkradong Bangladesh, country coordinator for the Ocean Conservancy’s
International Coastal Cleanup, and Organizer of the Banff Mountain Film
Festival World Tour. He has organized cycling rides throughout Bangladesh
including the Sir Edmund Hillary Ride, the Ride for Green, and the LiveStrong
Ride. www.muntasirmamun.com/

14. Advisors
P. Chris Zegras is the Ford Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and
Transportation at MIT. His research interests include the influence of the built
environment on individual travel behavior, transportation infrastructure and
system financing, indicators of sustainable transportation, and mitigating
transportation greenhouse gas emissions. On these and other related topics, he
has consulted widely, including for the World Bank, the Inter-American
Development Bank, the Canadian, German, US, and Peruvian Governments, the
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and the United Nations
Center for Regional Development.
Zia Wadud is an Associate Professor in Civil Engineering at the Bangladesh
University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). Zia completed his PhD from
Imperial College London in Civil Engineering Policy in 2008 as a Commonwealth
Scholar and held research positions at the University of Cambridge and at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Zia’s current research interests are in
modeling and valuation of policy interventions in the transportation and
environment sector (including climate change policy), modeling energy demand
and assessing risk and vulnerability in the context of broader Civil Engineering
topics.

15. Good cities don’t
happen by accident.

16. Living Dhaka Program Requirements
manpower
500 volunteers to help register / scan city users (university students)
Training for volunteers and marketing campaign for users
materials
100-400 Android powered smart-phones
QR code printer and collateral (business cards/ T-shirts)
T-shirts / hats / food for volunteers
Signage and digital projectors
technology(beingdevelopedatMIT)
Mobile application(s) for registering and scanning users
Back-end databases for storing, processing, analyzing data

17. *Related to existing or new experiments in
Living Dhaka Proposed Timeline the city to promote alternatives to cars
Oct19Today
Oct-NovBuildMIT-Dhakaworking team
Oct-JanRecruitVolunteers (Dhaka) Dec1st Viral marketingcampaign(Dhaka)
OctReachouttoNGOs,gov’tofficials, Jan1st
&otherstakeholderstogarnersupport Trainingof
andevaluatefeasibility NovIdentifyspecific volunteers
experimentsto measure* begins
(Dhaka)
Oct21st-Nov9thFundingdeadline
fromMIT resources(MIT)
Oct31st Nov1–24th
Finish1st
Jan8th
Usertestinginboth
TeamfromMIT
Working MITandDhaka
arrivesinDhaka
Prototypeof
MobileApps Jan15
andBackend Launch
(MIT)

18. Open Questions
Feedbackonideaandconceptesponpitchclarity
COUHESapprovalfromMIT
FundingsourcesforLivingDhakaprototypeduringIAP
Userexperience–willusersparticipate?
Howmuchdataandparticipationrequiredfordatatobeuseful
Buildingtechnologyprototypeandtestingremotelybeforelaunch
Identifyingand/ordeployingcityexperiments
Governmentapprovalstoprototype
Businessmodel

19. Appendix

20. LIVING
DHAKA
User experience
1 2 3
Register. Scan. Project.
An initiative of the

21. LIVING
DHAKA
User experience
H
e
mmut
W
2Hour Co
Visualize.
An initiative of the

22. LIVING
DHAKA
Scanning mobile application
Scan to
download app.
Also press to
start the scan.
Scan.
An initiative of the

23. LIVING
DHAKA
Scanning mobile application
Select Send data
Scan
transport to the
QR code.
mode. cloud.
10 seconds (or less). An initiative of the

24. LIVING
DHAKA
*Potential city experiments
sexy sidewalks

25. LIVING
DHAKA
*Potential city experiments
critical mass cycling

26. LIVING
DHAKA
*Potential city experiments
the best way to see Dhaka