CAMBRIDGE, MA— Protests, anger, controversy, arrests, evacuation—words used in the news to describe Jerusalem today. Still, MIT's Jerusalem 2050 Program seeks visions for a city of peace by mid-century through a website: www.envisioningpeace.org. The site is loaded with interactive tools and resources to help foster dialogue, ideas, and solutions for cities of conflict, beginning with Jerusalem.

Envisioningpeace.org is the next phase in the Program's efforts to organize a global problem-solving exercise. "The hope is that people around the world will be inspired and work together to generate new art, new organizations, and new cooperative projects and synergies as inclusive pathways towards peace-solutions as opposed to THE SOLUTION of track 1 diplomacy. The site aims to create an open forum to engage global civil society in dialogue, envisioning, brainstorming, presenting, critiquing, and re-developing ideas for, not only a just, peaceful, and sustainable Jerusalem, but also for peaceful cities worldwide," said Diane Davis, professor of political sociology and head of the International Development Group at MIT.

The site also showcases the exhibition and visions from the Program's Just Jerusalem Competition-an open exercise in futurist planning. The winning teams hailed from around the world and were selected in spring 2008 by a world-class jury.

About Jerusalem 2050
Jerusalem 2050 is a unique visionary and problem-solving project jointly sponsored by MIT's Department of Urban Studies & Planning and the Center for International Studies. By bringing together Palestinian and Israeli scholars, activists, business leaders, youth, and others worldwide, it seeks to understand what it would take to make Jerusalem, a city also known as Al Quds, claimed by two nations and central to three religions, a place of diversity and peace in which contending ideas and citizenries can co-exist in benign, yet creative, ways. For more information, visit http://www.envisioningpeace.org.