Community and Environment
The presence of a community (or lack thereof) has a dramatic impact on all areas of life for the elderly, including physiological functioning, mental health, and the ability to continue to fulfill their social roles as family members and professionals. Research will focus on the relationships between the elderly, the community, and the home. Multidisciplinary teams or researchers from the Technion and from community institutions will perform data driven studies from the perspective of urban sociology. This research theme is led by Assoc. Prof. Merav Aharon-Gutman
Assoc. Prof. Meirav Aharon Gutman is an urban sociologist and a faculty member in the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion. Her research centers around the development of innovative urban planning models designed to mainstream social considerations at the process of decision making in the town planning realm. In recent years, she has devoted time to research and policy development in the field of age-friendly cities.
Constellation of Loneliness is a data-driven video installation that visualizes urban loneliness in the Hadar neighborhood of Haifa. Drawing on municipal data, social topography, and immersive digital modeling, the work transforms anonymized data into a glowing constellation—each point marking the site where isolated elderly residents were found deceased, alone and unnoticed. At the heart of the piece lies a central metaphor: the solitary elder as a falling star—visible for a moment, then gone—symbolizing the fragile presence of those living and dying in isolation. The project invites viewers to step into a digital city model where social data becomes tangible and emotionally resonant. By visualizing absence and isolation, the piece challenges policy-making to move beyond abstraction and confront the human cost of social neglect.
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THEME LEADER
Meirav Aharon-Gutman
Assoc. Prof.,
Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning
Urban Sociology, Smart Cities, Data driven policy simulation