The Principal Investigator is Larry Susskind, Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning and Vice-Chair of the inter-university Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. Professor Susskind is well known in the urban and environmental planning fields for his published work on facility siting, collaborative approaches to public policymaking, and decarbonization. He has supervised more than 75 doctoral dissertations and 150 master’s theses at MIT. He is an applied social scientist with background in public policy, public administration, environmental planning, negotiation and dispute resolution, social entrepreneurship, and conflict resolution.

Institutional Complexity
Institutional Complexity
Our analysis confirms that disputes often arise during the planning and development of new facilities because the "siting process" does not follow clear rules and relevant stakeholders are excluded. Often there are multiple layers of regulatory complexity that are difficult to navigate.