A map of the method. Open a part to see its pieces; open a piece to see the facts, the files and the links behind it. Made by one student with an AI coding agent, 15 September to 13 October 2026, for STU 1504 at the Harvard GSD.
Sources is what was read. Ontology is what it was read into. AI guardrails is what the agent was allowed to do. Evidence is how every figure links back to its document. Platform is how it came together, in order.
Boston’s grid is a palimpsest: each generation added a layer (light, streetcars, appliances, air conditioning, gas heat, solar, heat pumps, computing), each layer was fixed in place by a decision, and a resident lives with all of them at once. The atlas lets a resident see how those decisions land on the bill and the street, with evidence that runs back to the document.
The adjudicated record first: dockets, parties with standing, briefs, findings. That is where decisions are written down, and where the people with lawyers are. On the 2022 EV order Tesla appears by name with the issues it argued; the residents who sent public comments appear only as a tally on the docket. The atlas shows that imbalance rather than evening it out. It reads orders, not briefs; it records what a regulator found, not what it should have found; silence stays silence.
STU 1504 “Who Owns the Grid?”, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Fall 2026. Heating-fuel, income and housing-type layers by Dan Hu, shown with her agreement. Code MIT; what the project created CC BY 4.0; third-party material cited, not relicensed. The repository is private only because six datasets may not be redistributed; the files under /atlas/ are open. Technical reference: Methods.