• The premises, located in the Regional Government building, will house the City Lab Biobío working teams. Various stakeholders present — including the Chilean Chamber of Construction, Corporación Ciudades and Regional Governor Rodrigo Díaz, alongside the senior representatives of the MIT delegation — highlighted the significance of this public-private partnership, which seeks to promote neighbourhood-scale urban solutions through technology and innovation.

Concepción, 3 May 2023. From Wednesday through Saturday, a nine-strong delegation of professionals from MIT is in Concepción carrying out a range of activities as part of City Lab Biobío, the city laboratory MIT is implementing in Greater Concepción with funding from the Regional Government of Biobío and the Chilean Chamber of Construction in Concepción, managed by Corporación Ciudades and driven from the outset by ChileMass.

The group is led by Kent Larson, director of MIT Media Lab’s City Science group, who was the central figure at one of the project’s key milestones on Wednesday: the inauguration of its headquarters. From that day forward, City Lab Biobío will operate out of premises in the Regional Government building, in an open space that, thanks to its glass walls, connects visually with the street outside.

Regional Governor Rodrigo Díaz led the ribbon-cutting ceremony, reflecting on urban projects that often stall due to conflicting interests or simply the lack of a specific methodology. “That is why it is reasonable to innovate in this area. If we cannot tackle these initiatives separately, there is an opportunity in public-private cooperation with academia. It is with this awareness that we sought a world-class alternative — because MIT is the most relevant innovation institute in the world,” said the regional authority.

Marcela Martínez, director of City Lab Biobío, focused on the community-facing ethos that defines the laboratory. While the Universidad de Concepción, Universidad del Bío-Bío and Universidad del Desarrollo are already participating, she extended an open invitation to more stakeholders to join the effort. “This will be a welcoming, open space where citizens can engage with technology, science and research. We are an open laboratory, we work collaboratively, and if other universities want to join our network, they are very welcome,” she said.

Kent Larson, director of MIT Media Lab’s City Science group, also centred his remarks on the importance of people at the heart of the city’s scientific and technological advances. “Without communities, technology is just more technology — not smart urban planning. We can model everything that can be captured in data, but what matters most is articulating all those enormous flows of information to achieve a global, systemic view, with the city’s residents at the centre of the analysis and recommendations,” said the American researcher.

With the establishment of City Lab Biobío, Greater Concepción joined a network of urban laboratories that already includes cities such as Hamburg, Shanghai, Taipei, Ho Chi Minh City, Toronto, Andorra and Guadalajara. This global connection was at the heart of the remarks by Juan Armando Vicuña, national president of the Chilean Chamber of Construction, who said: “Good initiatives transcend borders, regardless of where they are. If this is done well in Concepción, it could be taken to other cities in Chile — and the world is watching us through MIT.”

Finally, Patricio Donoso, president of the board of Corporación Ciudades, highlighted the long-term vision underpinning the project: “When we talk about how we want cities to become places of opportunity, the solutions are not simple — they are complex, but above all they require a medium and long-term perspective. That is at the heart of this project: looking toward that horizon with the citizen at the centre,” he concluded.

The objective of City Lab Biobío is to strengthen housing planning and sustainable urban development through the implementation of tools and methodologies that allow real-time, to-scale simulations, built from data gathered jointly with communities and relevant public and private stakeholders. Three weeks ago it was announced that the first area to be studied and modelled will be the Costanera district of Concepción, whose three neighbourhoods will be visited this Thursday by the MIT expert delegation.

Media inquiries with: Enrique Barrera, Cel. +56997420472.