Our Research Center, Labs & Groups
Every change starts with an idea!
Our community of change-makers is growing in the various research labs and groups. Meet our research labs that cultivate ideas for a better future.
OUR RESEARCH CENTER
The Philip and Ethel Klutznick Center for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS)
The Center for Urban and Regional Studies, which was the first of its kind in Israel, was established at the Technion in 1969 by the late Prof. Moshe Hill. Since 1989, the Center has enjoyed the generous support of the Philip and Ethel Klutznick family. The Center is situated in the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, and is closely connected to the faculty’s Urban and Regional Planning Program. It cooperates with other research institutions and research fellows at the Technion and nationwide.
OUR LABS
Fair Transport Lab
The Fair Transport Lab studies the fairness of transport systems in developed and developing countries. The lab aims to push the boundaries of transport research by engaging in philosophical and empirical research. The lab seeks to deliver fundamental insights that reshape the way we think about transport. It also provides hands-on knowledge that can bolster advocates, professionals, decision-makers and others who share the lab’s ambition to help shape a fairer transport systems around the world.
Smart Social Strategy
The Smart Social Strategy lab is a multidisciplinary lab for practical research that designs and redefines the content of public policy in general, and socio-spatial policy in particular. The lab’s partners are municipal authorities, non-profit organizations, and local communities, that together develop spaces and apply innovative processes for urban planning and management, based on models of collaborative organizations (co-production). The lab provides a connection between a toolbox identified with the paradigm of the “smart cities,” and advanced public participation practices.
The Technion Socio-Ecological Research Community
The Socio-Ecological Research Community at the Technion studies human-nature interactions using a broad range of conceptual and methodological approaches. We are a diverse community of researchers and students trained as ecologists, policy analysts, geographers, anthropologists, planners, landscape architects and others. Our research is driven by concern about the rapid pace of environmental degradation globally and locally, including such threats as anthropogenic climate change, biodiversity loss and loss of natural resources. We are particularly concerned because this degradation is increasingly threatening the potential for human life and wellbeing on the planet.
Urbanites: Human Habitat (Re)Development Research Group
In Urbanites research group we examine the interplay between urban forms and human experience. We specifically focus on the implications of major urban development and redevelopment processes on planning cultures, urban living, social diversity, and displacement. Urbanites research group also explores and advances versatile qualitative methodologies in urban planning research and practice by developing and implementing new approaches to data collection, data analysis, and representation of research outcomes.
The Planning Policy Lab
The lab focuses on policy studies that can inform and inspire change in Israel and abroad. Lab members explore a range of policies in order to inquire what works and what does not and to assess the impact of land use policies. In so doing, the lab seeks to inform practitioners and fellow researchers while linking practice to research. Examples of major research topics include: housing policies, urban regeneration, value capture, vertical development, policies pertaining to street art in the city, heritage preservation, as well as centralization and devolution reforms.
Society, Space and Planning Lab
The Society, Space and Planning Lab focuses on geographical research that deals with the study of the city and the region and their development. This study covers a variegated scale of socio-cultural facets. The research in the Lab stems from a profound intellectual interest, in science that comes to expand the knowledge about the various effects that spatial development has on humans, their wellbeing, life-chances and on other diverse fields of life in which persons are involved. The research in the laboratory philosophically discusses the normative significance of development and empirically investigates it in different research methods that carry potential for policy recommendations in the field of planning.
Urban Dynamics and Economics Research Group (UDERG)
The research fields of the Urban Dynamics and Economics Research Group (UDERG), are urban and regional economics using urban dynamics modeling tools. The research group is interested in the complex relations between economic systems, social arrangements and cities. In particular, the systematic examination of feedback effects and interactions between economic incentives, regulatory systems and the spatial dynamics of the built environment is a major intellectual challenge. An in depth understanding of these interactions is interesting on a theoretical level.