iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Looking forward to the great lineup for this semester's Healthy Places Design Lab-supported speaker series at Harvard GSD’s urban planning and design department. Please join us if you're in Cambridge ✨

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Et vous, votre été ? Je relaie l'appel à témoignages du Collectif Dernier Etage dont je fais partie depuis quelques mois. Nous œuvrons pour l'habitabilité de nos logements en situation de fortes chaleurs. Si vous avez 10 min, votre retour d'expérience sera précieux ! framaforms.org/canicules-20...

framaforms.org

Canicules 2026 - retour sur la situation vécue à votre domicile | Framaforms.org

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

🎙️This summer, I was featured in an NPR segment about France’s growing cooling crisis and the way climate change is reshaping the country’s relationship with air conditioning. We discuss the difficult questions surrounding how (and for whom) cities should adapt. www.npr.org/2026/07/25/n...

npr.org

The cooling crisis: How climate change forced air conditioning onto France's agenda

For a country that's never needed -- and often looked down on -- air conditioning, this has been a summer of reckoning. As France suffers through successive extreme heatwaves, AC has become a politica...

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

My latest article in HDM examines what heat waves in Paris reveal about the city’s social and spatial inequalities. Looking beyond temperature and weather, it considers how the built environment (specifically housing and hospitals) shapes people’s experiences of (and vulnerability to) extreme heat.

harvarddesignmagazine.org

Heat Waves as a Social Autopsy of the Built Environment

In Paris, the emergency department is the final buffer of a housing system that exports its thermal distress directly into the health system.

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Reposted by Magda Maaoui, PhD

Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies @harvard-jchs.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

In a new @gsd.harvard.edu magazine essay, @magdamaaoui.bsky.social & @airbrycki.bsky.social unpack how the Massachusetts’ MBTA Communities Act is playing out across the state. While compliance with the law looks high, their research shows more nuance. www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/articles/mbt...

harvarddesignmagazine.org

Why Assessing the MBTA Communities Act Is More Complicated Than You Think

New Harvard GSD research shows that compliance with the Massachusetts transit-linked zoning law is more widespread than the media depicts.

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

New interview in Le journal du Grand Paris: I talk about what extreme heat means for chambres de bonne, energy‑inefficient housing, and the risk of “green” micro‑gentrification—plus how insulation mandates, subsidies, and heritage rules collide on Paris’s top floors.

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Careful what you wish for: back in Paris to study heat, now trapped in the canicule doing ‘embodied fieldwork’ in 40°C with no AC in sight. On the bright side, I'm available to talk to journalists about heat, its health effects, & adaptation. DM me if you don't know how to make sense of all this!

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Perfect timing as New York just released its new housing plan—A new paper I co-authored with Lance Freeman and Yining Lei, AICP on the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program, a legacy of de Blasio’s mandates, has recently been published in Land Use Policy. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Very excited to connect with the larger research community at Harvard by being now affiliated with the Pop Center at the Chan School of Public Health. I’ve also recently become an affiliate of the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, as well as the Center for European Studies.

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

I have written about housing as a social contract. New Harvard Design Magazine digital piece featuring a conversation I had with Chris Herbert, Susanne Schindler, and Becca Heilman, curated by A. Krista Sykes, on what it would take to seize the momentum www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/articles/soc...

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Reposted by Magda Maaoui, PhD

Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies @harvard-jchs.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Social housing isn’t public housing with a new name. It’s a different way to think about land, funding, design, and who our cities and housing are for. Four researchers sat down for a @gsd.harvard.edu roundtable discussion. @magdamaaoui.bsky.social www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/articles/soc...

harvarddesignmagazine.org

Social Housing, Reconsidered

Chris Herbert, Susanne Schindler, Becca Heilman, and Magda Maaoui examine what social housing is, what it could become, and hinders it.

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

I’m on the jury for this award & if you have planning grad students interested in submitting a research paper, please encourage them to apply!

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

My hybrid but determined testimony at a recent Cambridge housing committee hearing. I was tasked with sharing evidence from Massachusetts, other states, and other cities around the world, underscoring why the 2025 multifamily zoning reform the city has adopted needs to stay in place.

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

A full series of posters presenting past Healthy Places Design Lab-supported speaker series at Harvard GSD’s urban planning and design department, bringing bold ideas and fresh perspectives to the conversation. Looking forward to planning more of these ✨

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

First time holding a copy of the Renée Gailhoustet book! Right on time for Spring flowers 🌸🪴 sneak peek snapshots of why Renée matters more than ever as we grapple with a crisis of care and an inability to build better commons. ed. NVBL + Architectural Association Publications

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Reposted by Magda Maaoui, PhD

Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies @harvard-jchs.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Social housing shouldn’t just be about unit counts—it should be about the pleasure of living. In a new blog, @magdamaaoui.bsky.social argues for renovation over demolition, designing for difference and everyday life, and for resident-led design. @gsd.harvard.edu www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/pleasur...

jchs.harvard.edu

The Pleasure of Living: Lessons from France for US Social Housing

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Emmanuel Grégoire won the Paris mayoralty. A real win for Paris—and a powerful signal that a progressive coalition can still hold the capital. The other story is the inner-ring suburbs, where several pivotal city halls were won by the left, places that struggle with housing pressure + inequality.

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

I was recently invited by @ethz.ch’s Einstein Colloquium on Science and Policy (thank you David Kauffmann!) to present this research on the geography of rental deserts, co-authored with Whitney Airgood-Obrycki and Sophia Wedeen. Read the paper here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

tandfonline.com

Rental deserts, segregation, and zoning

Restrictive zoning and NIMBY attitudes have left nearly a third of neighborhoods across the United States with few options for renters. The concentration of rental housing in some neighborhoods and...

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

New-ish paper, in 🇫🇷, with my beloved friend and co-author @noranafaa.bsky.social! We explore frameworks that can equally serve research on North American housing, school access, and neighborhood health outcomes for the Revue Internationale de Sèvres. journals.openedition.org/ries/16682

journals.openedition.org

Les écoles, de nouvelles aménités urbaines aux États-Unis ?

S’interroger sur la place des écoles en ville aux États-Unis, c’est invoquer toute une histoire urbaine, sociale et raciale construite sur des logiques de ségrégation dès le xixe siècle et reconfig...

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Thanks for featuring my podcast episode on Lessons from French housing in the monthly newsletter, @columbiagsapp.bsky.social!

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

For colleagues still tweaking their syllabi for the semester: I recently reviewed Sara Bronin's Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes our World, for the Journal of Urban Affairs. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

tandfonline.com

Key to the city: How zoning shapes our world, by Sara C. Bronin

Published in Journal of Urban Affairs (Ahead of Print, 2025)

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Join us for this semester's At Home and Abroad speaker series, co-organized by the GSD Healthy Places Design Lab, and Healthy places GSD! @amydain.bsky.social @gsd.harvard.edu

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Join us for this semester's Planning for Health speaker series, co-organized by the Harvard GSD Healthy Places Design Lab, and Healthy places GSD! @joeallenjoe.bsky.social @gsd.harvard.edu @biobotanalytics.bsky.social

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

I always start by the acknowledgements section when I read nonfiction. It’s a passion of mine. I do it as meticulously as when I watch the pilot episode of a show, pause and reflect, without jumping into the second episode just yet. I could write an entire essay on pilots and acknowledgments.

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Last year, I gave a guest lecture at the London School of Economics about my research at the nexus of housing and health. Immense thank you to colleagues in the sociology department Giulia Torino and David Madden for such a warm welcome.Excited to be sharing this published conceptual paper soon.

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

For colleagues still tweaking their syllabi for the semester, here's a book recommendation from me: I recently reviewed Cole Stangler Stangler's Paris Is Not Dead: Surviving Gentrification in the City of Light, for the Journal of Planning Education and Research: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

journals.sagepub.com

Review: Paris Is Not Dead: Surviving Gentrification in the City of Light, by Stangler, Cole - Magda Maaoui, 2025

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Reposted by Magda Maaoui, PhD

Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies @harvard-jchs.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

In an episode of the podcast Housing After Dark, @alexschafran.bsky.social sits down with our former postdoc @magdamaaoui.bsky.social to unpack what the U.S. can learn from France’s approach to housing. @gsd.harvard.edu open.spotify.com/episode/1gY0...

open.spotify.com

Housing After Dark Episode 21: Magda Maaoui on Lessons for American Housers: Why France and the US are More Similar Than We Think

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

The London opening of the Renée Gailhoustet exhibition at the Architectural Association was featured in another article: www.wallpaper.com/architecture... The book, to which I contributed, will be out in March 2026!

wallpaper.com

Explore architect Renée Gailhoustet’s radical social housing

The Algerian-French architect created bespoke designs such as Le Liegat in Paris; explore her legacy at a London exhibition

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Reposted by Magda Maaoui, PhD

Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

Friends in London! New exhibit "Renée Gailhoustet: A Thousand and One Ways of Living" this Friday at the AA. Precedes the release of Renée Gailhoustet, a new book by NVBL, to which I contributed a piece on Gailhoustet's unique role in producing healthy social housing throughout the late 20th century

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

My fellow French and Canadian housers have lately been tuning into very detailed New York City housing politics & provision mechanisms. I gave this interview to make sense of the history, and the future, of New York's housing landscape to European audiences: www.mediapart.fr/journal/inte...

mediapart.fr

Zohran Mamdani ou le pari gagnant du logement

En plaçant au cœur de sa campagne la question du logement, Zohran Mamdani a réussi à mobiliser un électorat populaire qui s’est depuis longtemps détourné des urnes. Habituellement relégué au second p…

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

You can read about my research on heat, housing, and environmental health in the 🇫🇷 December 15 edition of @aoc-media.bsky.social, with a preview of my current mixed-methods work on environmental health inequalities in the era of global warming: aoc.media/analyse/2025...

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

Mon analyse à retrouver dans l’édition du 15 décembre d’ @aoc-media.bsky.social, avant-goût de mes travaux actuels sur les inégalités de santé environnementale à l’ère du réchauffement climatique : aoc.media/analyse/2025...

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

📣 new collective book alert 📣 I contributed a keynote chapter in a new book on Grand Paris lived infrastructural experiences, published by Theatrum Mundi and dpr-barcelona. Contributions from architects, urbanists, choreographers, and visual artists as part of a LINA European architecture project.

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Last month, I was elected to serve on the Boston Society for Architecture Board, alongside an inspiring group of leaders as we advance design’s impact on our city and communities. www.architects.org/news/2025-bs...

architects.org

2025 BSA/AIA Election Results Announced

Full bios and mission statements for the winning candidates are available to view . Katherine West Faulkner, FAIA , Founding Principal at West Work , was…

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

Honored to join the Harvard Bloomberg Center for Cities as a faculty affiliate. Looking forward to collaborative and interdisciplinary opportunities to deepen my comparative, transatlantic work at the intersection of the right to housing, health inequalities, and environmental justice.

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

I joined the Healthy Places Design Lab in 2024 and am now lucky to co-lead it alongside its founders Ann Forsyth and Jennifer Molinsky. More announcements about ongoing research initiatives to come.

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

I can’t vote in NYC. But one thing I can do is get on French national morning news to talk about Zohran’s promising housing plan, and what it will take to make it happen, when he wins www.radiofrance.fr/francecultur... @franceculture.fr @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

Currently doing some work on Renée Gailhoustet and her pioneer work on French social housing. I put her in the same category of genius as Charlotte Perriand. Any other names that should be included in that group in your opinion?

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

Any lead from people on their favorite platform for interactive data display: is it flourish, shiny apps, arcgis storymaps, something else altogether I’m not aware of?

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

spotted 👀 🔎: the book Pour en Finir avec le Grand Paris I co-wrote and published in September 2024, about rethinking Paris from its margins, on display at the Frances Loeb Library this summer @gsd.harvard.edu

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

For the first iteration of the course "At Home and Abroad: Housing in Comparative Perspective", students surpassed themselves as we looked into lessons from elsewhere to fix New York City’s housing crisis--in partnership with the @urbandesignforum.bsky.social. ▶️ www.gsd.harvard.edu/publication/...

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

Was at a terrific @yimbytown.bsky.social panel about the type of data-based research that practitioners & policymakers really need right now. This got me thinking: if you all could ask for one dataset or insight that’s not available yet, what would it be?

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

New from me: this podcast episode from @alexschafran.bsky.social’s podcast Housing After Dark. This conversation is a repeat of the panel for practitioners we held at @spur-urbanist.bsky.social San Francisco earlier this year, alongside Egon Terplan. open.spotify.com/episode/1gY0...

open.spotify.com

Housing After Dark Episode 21: Magda Maaoui on Lessons for American Housers: Why France and the US are More Similar Than We Think

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

Last month, we organized a Grand Parisian Night on the joint futures of the Parisian city center and its suburbs. The roundtable included Lamia El Aaraje, Deputy mayor of Paris, as well as architecture historians, designers, and artists. Video recording: www.gsd.harvard.edu/event/la-nui...

gsd.harvard.edu

LA NUIT DES IDÉES: A Grand Parisian Night

Event Description Six months after the success of the Olympic Games, this panel proposes a debate on the joint futures of the Parisian city center and its

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Magda Maaoui, PhD @magdamaaoui.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

New paper on rental deserts, segregation and zoning, with Whitney Airgood-Obrycki + Sophia Wedeen: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... We weave together: 1️⃣ a new "rental deserts" framework, 2️⃣ a new measure of segregation, and 3️⃣ a new approach to national zoning surveys @uaanews.bsky.social

tandfonline.com

Rental deserts, segregation, and zoning

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