Check out DUSP alumnus Maggie Super-Church in this New England Cable News segment which reports from Lawrence, Massachusetts where two families, with two very different backgrounds are living side by side, and closing the economic gap.
We’ve just updated the list of research from M@L graduate assistants and friends, including new research on green jobs, regional economic growth in Merrimack Valley, and career and technical education in our new Class Papers or Projects section. Also, check out the extensive new curriculum for networking college bound high school students, developed for the Lawrence Leadership Project in Spring 2009 and the notes from the first year of the Green Jobs Working Group.
Also, check out more video interviews from the M@L Story Project and leave a comment on our new academically enhanced version of the M@L Story documentary entitled Sustained City-Campus Engagement: Reflections on Our Practice on our MIT TechTV collection at http://techtv.mit.edu/collections/mitatlawrence.
If you like these videos, you’ll also like videos from our friends at the Community Innovator’s Lab (Co-Lab) focusing on how communities like Lawrence and departments at MIT can work together to solve the challenges of civic engagement, environmental sustainability, and economic development in the time of crisis and stimulus. Check them out on TechTV and CoLab Radio - a place to find out about innovative things happening in communities, to explore the relationship between communities and universities.
The Lawrence History Center’s exhibit, Made in America~ Story of Southwick-Union Crossing~People Place, Product will open on June 18th, 2009 at the Lawrence Heritage State Park (One Jackson St, Lawrence, MA), featuring oral history interviews and research done by Lawrence Community Works staff and youth members, and MIT@Lawrence practicum students in Spring 2009 - see interviews at http://uclawrence.ning.com/page/audio-1.
The exhibit tracks the 100 year history of the Union Crossing site - from manufacturing textiles, shoes and clothing, to creating this vibrant new Lawrence community. Focusing ont eh themes of “People, Place, Product”, the exhibit highlights transformations that took place in the complex and celebrates the spirit of community present throughout the site’s history.
Exhibit Reception, Thursday June 25 5-7pm
Open Daily 9-4pm
June 18th, 2009 - Labor Day
Free Admission
Check out this video of the final presentation to the Lawrence Community Works Union Crossing Committee, describing programs devised by the graduate and undergraduate students in the Spring 2009 Lawrence practicum course in the Dept of Urban Studies and Planning (11.423 LAWRENCE PRACTICUM: Info, Assets, and the Immigrant City). The presentation described three ideas for programs where LCW could incorporate storytelling as a process for community building around the re-development of a mill complex into green affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization - through channels such as on-site installation, skill-building workshops that feed into larger events, and virtual story documentation and sharing online on a social network. See http://uclawrence.ning.com/ for the proof of concept and to hear some of audio and video stories that the class produced or gathered.
You can also download the Powerpoint presentation.
Have you heard the MIT@Lawrence story lately? Join us for an on-campus screening of the M@L Story Project documentary this Friday May 1st, in the Bush Room of Building 10 at 1:30pm.
The partnership between MIT and the City of Lawrence has grown from a commitment made between the Dept. of Urban Studies & Planning and Lawrence CommunityWorks in 2002 to today’s thriving network of 29 departments, labs and centers at MIT and 27 partner organizations in Lawrence. This year’s initiatives, a mix of new ideas and ongoing projects, include: a practicum course focused on incorporating storytelling as a community-building tool for the nation’s first LEED Platinum certified mill redevelopment project; a strategic city-wide affordable housing plan; a GIS help desk and laboratory; a college prep program for low performing high school freshmen; and a spatial inventory of publicly-owned infrastructure gathered by iHouse undergraduate volunteers. With support from the Co-Lab, we’ve also spent the last year strengthening our student-run management strategy and incorporating collaborative approaches to reflect on our practice and learning.
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Earlier this week, we had over fifty attendees at our end-of-year celebration expo in Lawrence where we screened our new documentary and interactive timeline (see http://mitatlawrence.net/matl-story-project/). Special thanks to the hard work of all the guest speakers (including Milagro Grullón and James Barnes from the City of Lawrence Community Development Department, Jess Andors from LCW, and MIT’s own Ezra Glenn and Lorlene Hoyt), old and new partners, the hard-working research assistants, and the sounds of the Bruce Ferrera Quartet who made the night a great success!
Next year, we look forward to welcoming the incoming MCPs and PhDs we recruited and integrating them into such projects as a Lawrence-based green jobs working group and the Lawrence@MIT youth math and science program.
Come the inaugural Green Drinks networking event in Lawrence on
Wednesday, March 25, 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM
Terra Luna Cafe, 225 Essex St.
Greens Drinks is an international movement which brings together people who are passionate about the environment and green technology to share ideas, make contacts, and talk about anything and everything green.
Check it out at www.greendrinks.org
Green Drinks Lawrence is being organize by the following groups promoting Green Technology and Green Jobs in the Greater Lawrence area:
- MIT @ Lawrence
- Merrimack Valley Economic Development Council
- Merrimack Valley Planning Commission
- Groundwork Lawrence
- Veritas Bank (I.O.)
- YouthBuild Lawrence
- and others!!!
by Jeff Beam, MCP/MSRED, 2009
Research Assistant, MIT@Lawrence
In October 2008, the City of Lawrence Community Development Department released the MIT@Lawrence-produced “Green Commons” brochure as part of a collective marketing campaign for the range of sustainable initiatives currently underway throughout the City. The brochure provides information and outreach for a variety of private ventures, non-profit programs and development, and public and university initiatives, including:
- A 392 solar panel array generating 121 kilowatts of clean, renewable energy atop Sal’s Riverwalk, a commercial mill redevelopment;
- Private Lawrence entrepreneurs building businesses around renewable energy, sustainable modular housing and water-conservation fixtures;
- A multi-year initiative to create a 1.3 mile park system and pedestrian walkway along the Merrimack River;
- A collaborative task force for public health issues, consisting of businesses, health care providers, environmental groups, institutions and planners;
- A 400,000 square foot mixed-income housing and commercial development that transforms a complex of former industrial mill buildings into a new neighborhood.
The initial distribution placed 1000 copies in city buildings, departments and public areas as well as City-sponsored conferences and seminars. Ellen Minzner of the Community Development Department spent a year working with MIT@Lawrence research assistant Jeffrey Beam to investigate and catalogue the growing network of green initiatives. The Green Commons brochure represents the beginning of an ongoing project to achieve a more sustainable Lawrence.
For more information on the Greening of Lawrence, contact the City of Lawrence: (978) 620-3510 or www.cityoflawrence.com.
Monday, September 22, 2008 over 30 students and faculty members, Leon Trilling and Wesley Harris, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge came to the Lawrence History Center.
Arriving at 9:00am the guests met with LHC Board President
Pamela Yameen, Director Barbara Brown and Matt Russell. Brown gave them an overview of the history of Lawrence and information about the extensive collections housed at the History Center. The guests then toured the facility, viewing the collections, Essex Company documents; touring the walk-in vaults and the additional buildings in the historic courtyard. Interests ranged from engineering; public housing issues; public health and architecture. Many questions were posed but the recurring one was when would we be digitizing this extraordinary collection!
After viewing the site, we boarded a trolley to see the City
first hand. When we arrived at the Great Stone Dam, an engineer working for Enel Corporation met us to describe the new engineering technology presently being installed at the dam.
Upon returning to the History Center after an hour on the trolley, the students and faculty then met at the Center with City employees, Milagro Grullon and Ellen Minzner member of LHC Board and City Community Planning Department.
During the many conversations that took place, we also realized that MIT works with 8th grade students at the Lawrence Family Development Charter School - coming to the school the school to teach science and the the students go to Cambridge on alternative weeks.
This is the same school that the LHC has partnered with for the History Is What You Are Doing Now Summer Camp. For summer 2008, the cooperative project is to develop a tour guide of the City for the students to use - highlighting not only the current sites in Lawrence but putting them into the historical context of on an Industrial Revolution city. Students will acquire a greater understanding and respect of their City of Lawrence as well as incorporate public speaking skills and presentations. This idea came from discussions of such a project between Holly Jo Sparks of MIT, Barbara Brown of the History Center and Susan O’Neill of the Charter School based on a similar project called Our Town previously done in Dorchester and Roxbury.
Here at the History Center we are pleased that our nationally significant collection has been viewed by MIT and we anticipate further research, collaboration and input as we go forward. LHC is especially grateful to MIT community members Holly Jo Sparks; Rebecca Madson, Jeffrey Beam, and especially Lorlene Hoyt, who first proposed such a meeting to Barbara Brown in June.
I would also like to also acknowledge LHC Board Member Chet Sidell, who has been promoting just such a collaboration and Matt Russell,an MIT alum, for supporting our efforts.
Monday Septemeber 8, 2008
9:30 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT Faculty Club
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
Registration at 8:30 am; Program begins at 9:00 am
In 2004-05, the Housing, Community and Economic Development group hosted a weekly luncheon series which resulted in a publication entitled “Voices from Forgotten Cities: Innovative Revitalization Coalitions in America’s Older Small Cities.” To launch the dissemination of the report, a national convening, sponsored by DUSP, PolicyLink, and Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association, was held at MIT in October 2007.
To commemorate the recent release of PolicyLink’s companion report, “To Be Strong Again: Renewing the Promise in Smaller Industrial Cities,” a follow up convening will be held at the MIT Faculty Club on September 8, 2008 from 10am to 2pm (registration at 9:30am, breakfast and lunch will be provided).
Please notify Harriette Crawford (hcrawfor@mit.edu) if you would like to register for the convening. The program for this event will be forwarded to attendees.
The convening is sponsored by PolicyLink, MIT’s Community Innovators Lab, and the MA Smart Growth Alliance; registration is free.
To download or view “To Be Strong Again: Renewing the Promise in Smaller Industrial Cities,” go to: http://www.policylink.org/Projects/CoreCitiesInitiative/smallercities.html
To download or view “Voices from Forgotten Cities,” go to: http://www.policylink.org/documents/forgottencities_final.pdf
Print copies of both reports are available in Room 9-519.