Dissertation Title: DePUDS - Decentralized Prosocial Urban Development System

Abstract: 

Urban areas face severe socio-economic and environmental challenges like housing crises, inequity, and environmental degradation, often worsened by traditional zoning practices. These are typically rigid, inefficient, outdated, and susceptible to obstruction by narrow special interests (NIMBYism), failing to engage the broader community or adapt to evolving needs. This dissertation proposes the Decentralized Prosocial Urban Development System (DePUDS), a novel governance framework designed to overcome these shortcomings by empowering informed collective consensus and including the often-silent majority.

DePUDS integrates decentralized technologies like blockchain and smart contracts with structured economic incentives, facilitated through an accessible user-friendly Decentralized Application (DApp) to encourage broad participation. This system fosters transparent, inclusive, and equitable urban development. Its core mechanism, adaptive incentive-based zoning, dynamically aligns developer profitability with community-endorsed priorities—such as affordable housing, public amenities, and sustainability—providing flexibility absent in traditional zoning.

Employing advanced agent-based simulations enhanced by large language models (LLMs), this research rigorously assesses DePUDS's effectiveness across two distinct case studies: Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA (a dynamic innovation hub) and the Inner Richmond District in San Francisco, CA (a culturally rich but housing-constrained neighborhood). Simulation results demonstrate DePUDS significantly aligns development outcomes with community preferences. In Kendall Square, targeted incentives substantially increased affordable housing and public amenities without hindering private investment. In the Inner Richmond, substantial community-driven incentives successfully unlocked constrained development, markedly reducing displacement risks, boosting affordable housing, enhancing amenity access, lowering carbon emissions via density, and preserving local cultural assets.

The comparative analysis underscores DePUDS's versatility, showing its potential to enhance growth in active markets and stimulate development in constrained ones. Key policy implications point towards structured DApp-based community participation, adaptive incentive zoning, and dedicated funding. While acknowledging practical implementation hurdles (legal, economic, technological), the findings affirm the feasibility, effectiveness, and transformative potential of decentralized, incentive-driven urban governance. This dissertation offers significant theoretical contributions, practical policy guidelines, and future research pathways to foster more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient urban communities.

Committee members:

Kent Larson
MIT Professor of the Practice
Director, City Science
MIT Media Lab

Neha Narula
Director of the Digital Currency Initiative
MIT Media Lab

John Henry Clippinger Jr.
Chief Innovation Officer and Founder
Swytch