We developed the MBTA lab for On the Move, a Massachusetts transportation equity coalition. For DS4SI, labs are immersive environments that assist social change agents in thinking more expansively about the kinds of social problems they are trying to solve. We do this through introducing aspects of experience that their ways of thinking and talking have unintentionally omitted or taken for granted. We also curate these environments such that participants are as much in their bodies or their imaginations as they are in their words.
For the M / B / T / A Lab, we broadened the concept of transportation equity to look at fundamental issues of mobility, from how it impacts our human development and possible futures to how it shapes our daily emotions. We looked at public transportation across the globe and across time. We put transportation and mobility in the context of human rights and battles for these rights. We invited participants to imagine future struggles for transportation equity and future designs for public transportation in outer space. Finally, we asked participants to see transportation and mobility within the frame of spatial justice and people's rights to be, thrive, express and connect.
