Experts from Pixar Animation Studios will be among the headline speakers at the City Science Summit Cities in Transition, the first meeting of MIT’s urban laboratory network in the Southern Hemisphere, to be held in Concepción on 7, 8 and 9 October.
The summit is organised by City Lab Biobío with the support of ChileMass, and will bring together 150 international experts in urbanism, data and technology from Germany, Spain, Mexico, the United States, Canada, Taiwan and China. Public activities will invite attendees to “dream up” the cities of the future through city data science and analysis from the various speakers.
“These talks will invite us to think about the city — to dream it up, even in the way that animated film sets are created — and to bring artificial intelligence into that equation, which will transform the way we interact with our urban environment. The community will be able to understand the importance of data analysis in anticipating urban scenarios, and how that can improve decision-making in city planning, with a positive impact on residents’ quality of life,” said Fernando Pérez, executive director of City Lab Biobío, an organisation that aims to establish itself as a regional urban data centre.
The Pixar speakers will open the public programme, beginning with Kristian Norelius, the company’s art director, and Amy Allen, the studio’s sets design supervisor, who will share their experience building worlds for films such as “Coco,” “Elio,” “Soul” and “Toy Story 3.” Both have been involved in imagining and conceptualising the aesthetic and atmosphere of several productions, including the complex infrastructure of imaginary worlds in “Inside Out” and the futuristic concepts explored in “WALL-E.”
The event — named “Cities in Transition” in reference to the rapid social, economic and demographic changes that cities face and must quickly adapt to — forms part of the MIT network’s annual meetings, which are regarded as a landmark moment in the fields of city science, technology and urbanism.
Alongside these talks, researchers from the MIT network will share the latest advances in urban research and present findings from five data-driven city science challenges applied to real urban problems.
On that note, Bernardo Suazo, president of the Chilean Chamber of Construction in Concepción, said the researchers “are not just coming to present — they will work with communities to give us a vision that allows us to build better, more equitable and more integrated cities,” much like the “futuristic” work the Pixar speakers bring to their films.
City Lab Biobío operates in Greater Concepción through the funding and support of the Regional Government of Biobío and the Chilean Chamber of Construction, with Corporación Ciudades managing its day-to-day operations. The laboratory also receives strategic support from the Universidad de Concepción, Universidad del Bío-Bío and Universidad del Desarrollo, along with partnerships with private companies and public entities.
