Keyword: Artificial Inteligence, Spatial Database, Spatial Modeling, Web Developement, Data Analysis
2025
Research
Role:Data Engineer
2025 Media Architecture Biennale Nominated
The Atlas of Popular Transport is a global exhibition and research project that documents and celebrates community-led efforts to map informal transit networks in cities across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It presents both an atlas and an experience, showing how collective intelligence, human insight, and technology can work together to create knowledge where none previously existed.
In many cities across the Global South, most people rely on informal transport such as minibuses, tuk-tuks, and shared vans that operate without official data or maps. This project reveals how residents, drivers, and local organizations can generate their own mobility data, demonstrating that the knowledge to improve cities already exists in the everyday movements of their people.
Local teams of students, civic technologists, drivers, and community groups used GPS devices, smartphones, and open-source tools such as OpenStreetMap to record routes, stops, and schedules. The data were organized using the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS), making them accessible through trip planners like Google Maps and Trufi as well as through research tools for transport equity and accessibility.
The Atlas of Popular Transport was exhibited at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, under the theme “Intelligens: Natural, Artificial, Collective.” Presented at the Arsenale di Venezia in Venice, Italy, the installation was on view from May 10, 2025, to November 23, 2025, curated and presented by the MIT Civic Data Design Lab (CDDL) and collaborating organizations.
The Atlas highlights how open, community-driven data can inform public policy, improve accessibility, and make transport systems more equitable.
Its findings have influenced policy in cities such as Cape Town, Cairo, and Bogotá and inspired new mapping initiatives across the Global South.
By focusing on gender equity, inclusivity, and local knowledge, the project demonstrates that the smartest cities are built not by technology alone but through the collective intelligence of the people who move through them every day.