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The Laboratory for Values in the Built Environment (ViBE Lab) seeks to create knowledge that enables practitioners in the built environment professions to design and plan our urbanizing world by defining and building upon values that are consistent with the development of meaningful and sustainable 21st century communities. Our transdisciplinary work joins quantitative and qualitative approaches to better understand and imagine the future of our built world.

The Laboratory for Values in the Built Environment (ViBE Lab) seeks to create knowledge that enables practitioners in the built environment professions to design and plan our urbanizing world by defining and building upon values that are consistent with the development of meaningful and sustainable 21st century communities. Our transdisciplinary work joins quantitative and qualitative approaches to better understand and imagine the future of our built world. We develop and employ scalable systems of design and analytic planning methods to make tangible and systemic impact, and to explore the risks and potentials of emerging technological capabilities such artificial intelligence to encounter our pressing environmental and social crises.

As such, we seek to better understand the DNA of the urban systems driving stasis and transformation in the built environment. We are concerned with uncovering, making visible, and operating upon the technological, political, and financial constructs and their underlying values that guide design and planning practice. Our approach is heavily rooted in the development and use of technology to understand, change, and create scalable and sensitive approaches to design and planning practice. 

An Approach to Values

The ViBE Labis concerned with the ways in which the planning and design of urban environments and the systemic constructs that undergird them are informed by values, with consideration of three distinct meanings of that word:

Normative judgment: Ultimately, the goal of planners and designers is to create places that are good and buildings that are relevant and meaningful within those places. Individuals, institutions, and communities (including the professional communities of planners and designers) may have distinct sets of values –such as justice, frugality, growth, freedom, beauty, cultural relevance, or environmental stewardship– that shape their view of what type of place is good or desirable and what type of place is bad or undesirable. In some cases, these values may be explicitly defined. In others, they may be implicitly assumed. How are these values established and communicated, how do stakeholders in the built environment navigate apparent conflicts among competing values, and what is the impact of such conflicts upon urban form and the disposition of places?

Quantitative measurement: Technological advances continue to increase our ability to measure and quantify characteristics of the built environment. We have the ability to measure or estimate carbon emissions from travel, or from the operational and embodied carbon of buildings. Indices have been developed to quantify walkability, inequality, racial segregation, and access to opportunities. How well do these quantified values represent the underlying constructs they represent? Which of these available values should we seek to maximize? In other words, how well do these (quantitative) values align with our (normative) values?

Financial valuation: Bracketing the question of whether market economics can deliver just outcomes, we recognize that financial considerations are a primary driving force in the distribution of resources and the shape of urban form. Decision-makers in both the public and private sectors make resource-allocation decisions with a goal of achieving maximum returns (or benefits) for a minimal investment (or cost). These decisions are commonly (and perhaps necessarily) based on an incomplete accounting of costs and benefits, and may not fully account for the priorities that stakeholders place on non-financial considerations, or on financial effects beyond the defined boundaries of the system being evaluated. How might financial valuation methods better account for the (normative) values of stakeholders? How might the design of values-driven financial mechanisms enable different opportunities for the disposition of urban form and architectural typologies?

Principal Investigators

Current Researchers

  • Gulirano Almuratova, AB (Statistics and Sociology), Harvard College, 2026
  • Everett Black, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2025
  • Lindsay Crockett, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2025
  • Connor Gravelle, MArch II, Harvard GSD, 2025
  • Michaela Gwiazda, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2025
  • Inmo Kang, MArch I, Harvard GSD, 2025
  • Avny Lavasa, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2025
  • Houpu Li, MS (Regional Science), Cornell University, 2024
  • Kamryn Mansfield, BS (Civil Engineering), Brigham Young University, 2024
  • Emma Miao, AB, Harvard College, 2026
  • Dawon Oh, DDes, Harvard GSD, 2026
  • Lys Otarola, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2026
  • Sulaya Ranjit, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2025
  • Charu Singh, MSRED, MIT
  • Aleksandar Bauranov, DDes, Harvard GDS, 2021
  • Charuvi Begwani, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2022
  • Melissa Berlin, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2025
  • Sue Chen, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2023
  • Sheyla Chevarria, MAUD, Harvard GSD 2025
  • Aanchal Chopra, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2025
  • Alex Cox, MUP, Harvard, GSD, 2023
  • Lucas Flint, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2025
  • Clara He, MArch I, Harvard GSD, 2024
  • Holly Hodge, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2024
  • Zoe Iacovino, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2023
  • Ryan Johnson, MUP, Harvard, GSD, 2023
  • Pablo Castillo Luna, MArch II, Harvard GSD, 2023
  • Mojdeh Mahdavi, DDes, Harvard GSD, 2022
  • Cam McCutchen, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2024
  • Ana Merla, MDE, Harvard GSD, 2023
  • Arnav Murulidhar, MUP, Harvard, GSD. 2023
  • Luke Reeve, MDE, Harvard GSD, 2023
  • Catherine Saint, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2021
  • Paul Salama, MUP, NYU, 2011
  • Aubrey Sanders, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2025
  • Romy El Sayah, MDes, Harvard GSD, 2021
  • Tianyu Su, DDes, Harvard, 2023
  • Isabella Tice, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2025
  • Alec Wagner, MDes, Harvard GSD, 2024
  • Allen Wang, MDes, Harvard GSD, 2025
  • Kati Wiese, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2025
  • Megan Willis-Jackson, MUP, Harvard GSD, 2023