The Atlas of Popular Transport is both a book and an exhibition that showcases how sixteen cities took data collection into their own hands. In places where no official maps existed, students, union leaders, civic hackers, artists, and riders documented the semi-formal and informal transport systems that move millions every day. From the buzzing jeepneys of Manila to the music-blaring matatus of Nairobi, the overstuffed danfos of Lagos, and Cairo’s microbuses, their grassroots efforts—low-tech but wildly ambitious—produced data that made the invisible visible.

In most cities around the world, the daily commute begins not with a schedule, but with a question: Where does this bus go? For the billions who rely on popular transport systems—minibuses, tuk-tuks, shared vans, or repurposed school buses—that question is a daily leap of faith. These systems exist in nearly every city across the Global South, yet in most places, no official data exists—not even a map. As a result, navigating them requires constant negotiation, deep local knowledge, and often the help of other riders, drivers, or simply word of mouth. The Atlas of Popular Transport shows what happens when that changes, illustrating how sixteen cities across Africa, Asia, and Latin America took advantage of a unique convergence of forces—the falling cost of smartphones, the rise of open-source tools like OpenStreetMap, and, most importantly, the determination of local actors who believed their cities deserved better and decided to develop data and maps of how their semi-formal, informal, or popular transport system operates to improve transport policy and provide greater access to these essential resources. With GPS trackers and cell phones in their hands and deep knowledge of their streets, students, union leaders, civic hackers, artists, and riders mapped these popular transport systems that had long gone undocumented but served millions daily. Their efforts were not part of grand transportation overhauls or billion-dollar infrastructure projects. They were grassroots, volunteer-powered, low-tech, and wildly ambitious. From the buzzing jeepneys of Manila to the music-blasting matatus of Nairobi, the overstuffed yellow danfos of Lagos, and Cairo’s ever-present microbuses, each project represented a quiet revolution: the decision to map what already exists—and the belief that making it visible could transform how cities move. What you’ll see in this Atlas of Popular Transport, both the exhibition and the book, is the output of that work: GTFS data projected on screens; paper maps tucked in drawers that, when pulled out, activate immersive video experiences that place you on the streets of each city. The installation invites you to feel what it’s like to ride these buses, to be part of these places, and to move through systems designed by the people who use them every day.

https://atlasofpopulartransport.mit.edu/

https://atlasofpopulartransport.mit.edu/press

https://freight.cargo.site/m/Z2333026500455413698216582562756/250423_CREDITS.pdf

Details

Building or project owner : MIT Civic Data Design Lab

Architecture : MIT Civic Data Design Lab

Structural engineering : MIT Civic Data Design Lab, We Exhibit

Facade design : MIT Civic Data Design Lab

Facade construction : WeExhibit (for Venice)

Kinetic engineering : WeExhibit (for Venice)

Technical layout light : WeExhibit (for Venice)

Display content/ visuals/ showreel : MIT Civic Data Design Lab

Project co-ordination : MIT Civic Data Design Lab, MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism

Interaction design/ programming : WeExhibit (for Venice)

Project sponsor/ support : MIT Civic Data Design Lab, MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism

Descriptions

Facade type and geometry (structure) : There are three different types of structures in the installation: 1) Electronically Connected Map Drawer used to both display the physical Atlas and generate the immersive experience. 2) Immersive Screen. 3) Projection Wall. The Electronically Connected Map Drawer holds the stories of how the sixteen cities developed their data, including the paper transit map they created. Each drawer represents one city, and when they are opened triggers the Immersive Screens to project street scenes of that city. The videos allow the visitor to feel they are catching the bus in that city. At the same time, the large Projection Wall displays the transport data for that city, showing animated simulation data of the city’s popular transport system as well as real footage of what it is like to be navigating the system, a streetscape.

Resolution and transmitting behaviour : The videos are projected at FullHD resolution

Description of showreel : Each one of the 16 cities has a different footage and video map animation. In the streetscapes, we see footage of the exterior of the vehicles that belong to the popular transport systems of the current city that is playing, followed by interior shots where we see how someone might get on a car, or pay for a ticket, or what the city looks like from the windows of the buses. The video map animations illustrate the various scales of popular transportation, beginning with individual vehicles and progressively zooming out to a final map animation that displays the routes and congestion of the systems on the streets.

Participatory architecture & urban interaction

Community or communities involved : Our sixteen communities are involved, please see the project credit link to learn more about the numerous groups we collaborated with. Local coalitions span universities, studios, civic hackers, driver associations and cooperatives, women’s groups, and youth mappers. Jeepney riders in Manila, matatu saccos in Nairobi, danfo riders in Lagos, and microbus users in Cairo all participate—not as “subjects,” but as co-creators of data, maps, and tactics.

Host organization : - 2025 Venice Biennale, MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism, and MIT Civic Data Design Lab

Legal form : Most efforts are networked collaborations rather than single legal entities

Issues addressed : - The absence of official data and maps for semi-formal or popular transport. - Mobility inequities, particularly for women and low-income neighborhoods. - Fragmented governance and opacity around data held by institutions. - Integration gaps between popular transport and formal transit, especially for last-mile access. - The precarity of volunteer projects without long-term funding or maintenance.

Impact : - In Cape Town, datasets informed COVID-19 policy. - In Cairo, they guided electric-vehicle corridor planning. - In Bogotá, they reframed connections between popular and formal networks to improve last-mile access for low-income communities. - Across cities, riders gained the ability to navigate and advocate with evidence; governments and multilaterals gained pathways to more equitable planning—when data was shared openly.

Tools developed : - Citywide GTFS datasets and paper transit maps co-edited with drivers, operators, officials, and the public. - A replicable, community-driven mapping methodology that turns grassroots data into navigable, analyzable infrastructure for planning, advocacy, and design. - An exhibition language that couples tangible artifacts (maps) with situated media (video) to communicate lived mobility.

Tools used : Smartphones and GPS trackers; OpenStreetMap and other open-source tools; the GTFS standard; and consumer trip planners (Google Maps, Trufi, Moovit) that can immediately ingest and circulate the data. The power comes from pairing simple tools with deep local knowledge.

Next steps : Sustain what has been started: fund maintenance as much as mapping; keep data public and usable; align multilateral capacity with grassroots authorship; deepen gender-inclusive practices; and continue connecting popular transport to formal systems without erasing what communities already built. The smartest cities aren’t the ones with the most sensors—they’re the ones that listen.

Mediacredits

MIT LCAU & CDDL

MIT LCAU & CDDL

MIT LCAU & CDDL

MIT LCAU & CDDL

MIT LCAU & CDDL

MIT LCAU & CDDL

MIT LCAU & CDDL

MIT LCAU & CDDL

MIT LCAU & CDDL