With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, frontline workers in all areas of retail, from consumer goods to restaurants to hotels, have been especially hard hit. How should we rethink jobs in retail to address the real and human concerns of workers, while at the same time creating better outcomes for employers? How can better job design create good jobs with higher productivity? How do we address the nearly “voiceless” work relationship retail workers have with their employers? How can a better workforce education system create better quality jobs? Join us, as MIT’s leading experts in retail explore the critical issues and possible new workforce scenarios of The New Retail.
City governments and planners alike commonly seek to increase pedestrian activity on city streets as part of broader sustainability, community building and economic development strategies. Though walkability has received ample attention in planning literature, most practitioners still lack methods and tools for predicting how development proposals could impact pedestrian activity on specific streets or public spaces at different times of the day. Cities typically require traffic impact assessments, but not pedestrian impact assessments. In this presentation I discuss a methodology for estimating pedestrian trip generation and distribution between detailed origins and destinations in both existing and planned built environments. I demonstrate its application in Cambridge, MA and Melbourne, Australia, where I compare estimated foot-traffic during lunch and evening peak periods to observed pedestrian counts and show how the model can be used to predict changes in foot-traffic that results from changes in real-estate development.
The 2021 MIT Japan Conference will feature presentations by leading MIT faculty in the areas of innovation, energy, business platforms, robotics, space flight, AI/ computer hardware, and life science. It will also include presentations by MIT-related startups in a variety of areas.
The conference this year will be divided into 6 webinars, held on January 21, 22, 28, 29, February 4 and 5 (starting at 9am Tokyo time). Webinars will consist of talks by MIT faculty and MIT startup speakers, with time for Q&A following each faculty talk. Opportunities for one on one meetings with MIT connected startups will be available on February 4th.