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October, 2016--The team behind DesignX, or DESx, a new design entrepreneurship accelerator from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning. From left: Gilad Rosenweig, executive director; Dennis Frenchman, faculty director and Class of 1922 Professor of Urban Studies and Planning; Andrea Chegut, research scientist in the MIT Center for Real Estate and director of the Real Estate Innovation Lab; and Matthew Claudel, PhD candidate and head of partnerships for DESx.

Matthew Claudel

October, 2016--The team behind DesignX, or DESx, a new design entrepreneurship accelerator from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning. From left: Gilad Rosenweig, executive director; Dennis Frenchman, faculty director and Class of 1922 Professor of Urban Studies and Planning; Andrea Chegut, research scientist in the MIT Center for Real Estate and director of the Real Estate Innovation Lab; and Matthew Claudel, PhD candidate and head of partnerships for DESx.

Matthew Claudel

Organization

Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston

Program

Rappaport Public Policy Fellow

Year

2018

Rappaport Public Policy Fellows spend 10 weeks each summer serving within the highest levels of state and municipal governments in the Greater Boston Area. The program includes students from graduate and professional programs at local universities.

Graduate School
MIT

Undergraduate School
Yale University

Mentor
Phil Puccia, Rappaport Institute Advisory Board Member

Agency
City of Boston, Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics Supervisor: Stephen Walter, Program Director

Description of Fellowship
Beta Blocks is a public, co-creative exploration of civic technology. My intention was to set the stage for Beta Blocks, before it is formally begun in partnership with the project team (lead by the Emerson eLab). Matthew’s work included case studies of past MONUM projects, focusing on what those precedents suggest for public engagement, regulation, finance, and temporality. Furthermore, a literature review, and a list of foreign precedents and inspirations, provide academic and non-academic grounding. Building on these – and much informed by conversations with the project team and my experience at MONUM – Matthew wrote a number of short draft essays that outline his own perspective on dimensions of Beta Blocks, such as Defining Civic Technology, the Paradox of Institutions and Scaling, and articulating what Beta Blocks is NOT. This work is well-summarized in the MONUM blog post that he wrote, as well as in a zine that he created.