MIT- UTM Malaysia Sustainable Cities Program (MSCP)

The MIT- UTM Malaysia Sustainable Cities Program (MSCP) is a five-year effort, initiated and run by faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Universiti of Teknologi of Malaysia (UTM), with generous support by the Ministry of Education Malaysia. The MSCP mission is to study and document sustainable city development efforts in Malaysia. Research findings will be developed into online instructional materials to enhance and extend the teaching of sustainable city development across universities in the global South. Every January, a student practicum will be held. Graduate students and faculty at MIT and UTM will partner with UTM to study, review, and refine the direction of the research in progress.

The MSCP is housed in CoLab in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT and the Institute Sultan Iskandar (ISI) at UTM.

Each year, ten Visiting Scholars from around the world will join the MSCP to contribute to its ongoing research efforts. Visiting Scholars will spend the first half of the academic year at UTM, conducting self-guided research on Malaysia’s cities. They will then head to MIT to use online, digital, and video-based educational technologies to codify and disseminate their findings. Visiting Scholars will be selected from a competitive applicant pool with special preference given to instructors and faculty teaching in G-77 countries.

In each city, the program aims to study:
(*) how economic development efforts have been pursued while enhancing ecological sustainability
(*) what strategies are used to address social, economic, religious, and intercultural tensions as they relate to city development
(*) which natural resource management and environmental quality improvement policies are catalyzed as a result of planned city development

The program also seeks to understand:
(*) national and state-level policies and legislation that shape the scope and quality of urban development
(*) regulations and procedures governing the ways in which stakeholders and the public-at-large are allowed or encouraged to participate in infrastructure and development planning
(*) strategies by which private development interests put together the financial, political and technical support the need to proceed with development projects
(*) the role that civil society plays in promoting sustainability as a goal in Malaysia.