Mui Ho
Center for Cities

The Cornell Mui Ho Center for Cities transfers knowledge to action to build more equitable and sustainable cities today and in the future.

Global Survey of City Leaders
World map colored in various shades of blue with dark blue dots

First ever Worldwide Survey of City Leaders

The Center for Cities reached out to over 1,000 city leaders worldwide. The survey asked questions about the local economy, housing, infrastructure and services, climate change and environmental sustainability, as well as financial and governance capacity.

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World map colored in various shades of blue with dark blue dots
Option Studio
A series of dwellings containing sheet metal roofs.

Informal Futures: Housing in Mathare, Kenya

Join us in our mission to transform knowledge into action with 'Informal Futures: Housing in Mathare, Kenya.' This innovative, cross-disciplinary studio brings together students from Cornell University and the University of Nairobi, engaging them in the critical challenges and opportunities of informal housing. Through this partnership, we empower the next generation of urban change agents to develop resilient, equitable, and sustainable housing solutions in one of Nairobi's oldest informal settlements.

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A series of dwellings containing sheet metal roofs.
Initiatives
1

Urban Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation

Climate change and its effect on urban populations is one of the greatest challenges of our century. This initiative generates new, actionable, and scalable knowledge about how cities can mitigate and adapt to climate change. Current work focuses on flooding, extreme heat exposure, and air quality in New York City. Supported by a planning grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the team is developing a transdisciplinary proposal for a new Civic-led Urban Adaptation Research Center (CIVIC-UARC) that brings together experts across multiple disciplines and institutions, civil society organizations, the public sector, and private industry to support equitable, sustainable, and inclusive approaches to urban climate change adaptation.

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2

Just and Equitable Cities

Rising urban inequality is one of the most wicked and entrenched problems facing cities around the world. This initiative supports research and practices that address how to design, plan, and build more just and equitable cities. Current work focuses on rapid urbanization contexts where new urban residents live in informal settlements that lack access to core urban infrastructure and services. These residents face the constant threat of eviction and efforts to push them to the urban periphery. It is well documented that this pattern of forcing informal settlement residents to the urban periphery, as well as the self-provision of core services, exacerbates city-wide problems of congestion and low productivity, as well as reinforcing patterns of rising urban inequality. The solution is city-wide, participatory, in situ informal settlement upgrading.

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3

Big Urban Data

How can big spatial data be used to understand our dynamic cities? This cross-disciplinary initiative aims to catalyze longer-term urban big data infrastructure to accelerate research, teaching, and engagement-focused urban design and planning practice. It will build our data and technical capacity as a generative resource for researchers and external partners, ranging from public agencies to urban design firms.

Faculty Labs

Housing + Property Lab

Suzanne Lanyi Charles

Examines the effects of global housing investment on local neighborhoods and household access to affordable, secure, and stable housing.

Adaptive Land Lab

Linda Shi

Studies why cities adopt regressive climate adaptation practices and what alternative approaches to property rights, land use and fiscal policies, and regional governance would enable more equitable and sustainable futures. 

Circular Construction Lab

FELIX HEISEL

Activates research to shift material consumption toward a circular model for designing and building a sustainable, low / no-carbon construction industry.

Water In, Water Out Lab

Victoria A. Beard

Produces new research on the water to waste cycle, across actionable scales, from source protection to household access. The lab connects knowledge to action to create more equitable and sustainable urban water management systems.

&Lab

Suzanne Lettieri, María González Pendás

A space born out of collaboration aimed at fostering new pedagogies and modes of public and civic-academic alliance through architectural design, architectural humanities, and the modes of research, teaching, and learning that animate them. 

Rural-Urban Building Innovation Lab

Leslie Lok

Explores the intersection of urbanization, novel material methods, and technology to create and experiment with hybridized design and construction processes in the urban fringe.

Housing Innovation Lab

Katharina Kral

Investigating the intersections of environmental, societal, and well-being concerns linked to housing, the lab explores synergies between building performance and quality of life across scales and their potential to reshape domestic space and architectural workflows. 

Local Government Restructuring Lab

Mildred Warner

From finance and infrastructure policy to economic development, planning, and public health, the Local Government Restructuring Lab explores cutting-edge research to inform public practice.

Legal Constructs Lab

Sara Bronin

Leads interdisciplinary projects in property, land use, historic preservation, and energy, inquiring into how law can foster more equitable, sustainable, well-designed, and connected places.

Regenerative Architecture Lab

Marta H. Wisniewska

Investigates alternative building materials and innovative construction techniques for a healthier and more regenerative built environment in the context of developed and developing territories.

Design Across Scales Lab

Alex Kobald, J. Meejin Yoon

A research platform, creative think tank, and incubator working at the intersection of the built environment, technology, sociology, and ecology.

Transportation Access and Policy Lab

Nicholas J. Klein

Focused on urban transportation, the lab studies the role that transportation plays in social and economic mobility, public opinions, and new technologies.

Realtime Urbanism Lab

Farzin Lotfi-Jam

Investigates the social impacts of new technologies that virtualize cities and populations. The lab produces research using extended reality interfaces, gaming engines, agent-based simulations, digital twins, and smart urban systems.

Environmental Systems Lab

Timur Dogan

Specializes in sustainable architecture and urbanism through research across design, engineering, computation, and building performance simulation.

Just Places Lab

Jennifer Minner

A multi-disciplinary research lab for igniting creative action, public imagination, and participatory place-keeping in the built environment.

a construction crew deconstructing a house with a large yellow lift

Thursday, October 3, 2024

Building Deconstruction, Reuse Would Benefit NYS Jobs, Climate

Felix Heisel, Architecture Assistant Professor and Director of the Circular Construction Lab (CCL); Jennifer Minner, CRP Associate Professor and Director of the Just Places Lab; and Wyeth Augustine-Marceil, Research Associate in the CCL and Just Places Lab, report that transitioning to a circular construction economy in New York could boost significant economic activity, create thousands of green jobs, and advance climate goals by reusing deconstructed building materials.

Dark skinned man with grey goatee wearing a blue embroidered shirt and standing on a green lawn in front of a grey stone building.

Monday, April 15, 2024

In Partnership: Supporting Informal Settlement Upgrading from Within

This April, the Cornell Mui Ho Center for Cities welcomes Joseph Kimani, Executive Director of Slum Dwellers International–Kenya, to campus to share conversation and learning as both organizations seek to support informal settlement residents in their efforts to achieve increased housing security and equitable access to urban services.

Construction workers wearing hard hats are renovating the exterior of a two-story house.

Thursday, January 25, 2024

Deconstruction: Rethinking the Building Life Cycle

Architecture Assistant Professor Felix Heisel, Director of the Circular Construction Lab, discusses the challenges and opportunities in building deconstruction.
In the Media

North America's Biggest City is Running out of Water

Vox: Mexico City is facing a water crisis, and it won't be the last city to do so. CRP Professor Victoria Beard says climate change is just one of the contributing factors.

Monday, May 13, 2024

Why Drivers May Soon Pay $15 to Use New York's Busiest Streets

The Christian Science Monitor: New York is due to become the first US city to charge a congestion toll on drivers entering its central business district in Manhattan. CRP Assistant Professor Nicholas Klein says that if the goal is to reduce congestion, a charge is the right approach.

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

Mexico City Runs Short on Water — a Public Good that's "Increasingly Difficult" to Provide

Los Angeles Times: Mexico City is facing a serious water shortage as leaky pipes, rapid development, and climate change converge. CRP Professor and Director of the Cornell Mui Ho Center for Cities Victoria Beard says more cities will face "day zero" scenarios as urban water gets "increasingly difficult" to provide.

Thursday, March 21, 2024

Mapping the Future

Business Insider: The report explores the potential impact of the National Zoning Atlas, a project led by CRP Professor Sara Bronin, on correcting the current low-inventory, high-priced US housing market.

Wednesday, February 21, 2024
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