Courses
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Second Semester Core Urban Planning Studio
Daniel D’Oca, Stephen Gray, Kathy Spiegelman, Frederick Merrill, Richard Peiser
The second semester core planning studio expands the topics and methodologies studied in the first semester core studio, GSD 1121, aiming to prepare students for…
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Quito and the Elasticity of the Spanish American Block
Using the city of Quito as a laboratory, this studio examines the urban legacy, current decline, and future opportunities of the Spanish-American colonial grid. It…
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Zhengzhou: Designing Critical Nodes for the “Urban Grids”
The fast-growing process in the Metropolis is associated with the large expansion of buildings and infrastructure, but also to the radical transformation of previous urban…
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The Industrious City: Rethinking Urban Industry in the Digital Age
Markus Schaefer, Hiromi Hosoya
Cities have always been places where commerce and production, working and living, are physically and functionally integrated. Only with the rise of industry have zoning…
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Extreme Urbanism V: Exploring Hybrid Housing Typologies, Elphinstone Estate, Mumbai
This studio will focus on questions of housing in the city of Mumbai. Exponential real estate values coupled with a burgeoning population and lack of…
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Urban Disobedience: 99 Provocations to Disrupt Injustice in St. Louis
The legacy of discriminatory laws, urban disinvestment, the decline of the industrial economy, shifts to a knowledge-based economy, concentrated poverty, physical, social and political divides,…
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Between Earth and Sky: A Building for the HafenCity, Hamburg
The setting for this studio is the HafenCity in Hamburg, which is currently one of Europe’s most ambitious urban transformations. Over twenty years to date,…
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Phantom Urbanism
Reinier de Graaf, Ricardo Solar
“We think out of the box so you don’t have to live in one.”Limitless billboard, Dubai, UAE. Once cities were designed to accommodate…
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Painting for Designers: Techniques, Methods and Concepts
The course objective is to advance, through painting, students' visual skills in artistic representation and creative imagination. Assigned and generated by students, projects will focus…
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Interdisciplinary Art and Design Practices
The Interdisciplinary Art Practices seminar investigates the exploratory character of art and design work in the interdisciplinary modalities of the contemporary culture. In the present…
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Designing the American City: Civic Aspirations and Urban Form
The course is an interpretative look at the characteristic patterns of settlement and attitudes towards cities and urban life that are identified…
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Urban Form: Transition as Condition
The fixed categories by which we have traditionally understood the urban no longer hold. They have been undermined by the multiplicity of…
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Advanced Seminar in City Form: Future of Streets
The Advanced Seminar in City Form invites a group of students to research and discuss themes about the form of cities in…
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Spaces of Solidarity
‘Spaces of Solidarity’ aims at examining community-driven spaces and spatial processes that pool and share resources to build social cohesion in times…
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Urban Grids: Open form for City Design-2
Framework:Within a larger research scope on “Revisiting the urban grids in the XXI century”, this seminar will focus on the investigation…
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Modern Architecture and Urbanism in China
Modernizing influences, largely from the hands of foreign powers, first forcefully entered China in the aftermath of the Opium War and signing…
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Cities, Infrastructures, and Politics: From Renaissance to Smart Technologies
Infrastructures play a decisive role in urban development and in the life of cities. This course will envisage this role from a…
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Conservation, Destruction, and Curating Impermanence
This seminar on critical conservation aims to develop concepts and strategies able to describe and curate the transitory and dynamic nature of…
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Public and Private Development
This course explores the analytic frameworks, skills, and bodies of knowledge required to understand, evaluate, plan, and implement public and private development within cities and…
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Urban Politics and Planning (at HKS)
In the face of failures and dysfunction at the national level, there is growing excitement about the welfare- and democracy-enhancing potential of cities. Yet, not…
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Cities by Design II: Projects, Processes, and Outcomes
Cities are palimpsests. They are the spatial manifestations of a layering and re-layering of social and environmental systems over time. Through a case study…
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Advanced Real Estate Finance
This course builds on GSD 5204 and comparable introductory real estate courses offered by other schools at Harvard. This year’s course covers…
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Building and Leading Real Estate Enterprises and Entrepreneurship
This course focuses on how you conceive, build and lead successful real estate companies. By virtue of the industry in which they…
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Housing and Urbanization in Global Cities
The subject of Housing and Urbanization in Global Cities examines housing policy and planning in urban societies around the world and especially…
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Urbanization and International Development
This course brings together two fields of specialization that are central to planners keen on working in international contexts: i) the field…
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Towns and Settlements in Metropolitan Regions
As cities expand into metropolitan regions they inevitably push up against, produce, otherwise engage, and sometimes engulf already established settlements on their…
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U. S. Housing Markets, Problems, and Policies
This course will examine the operation of U.S. housing markets, the principal housing problems facing the nation, and the policy approaches available…
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Environment, Economics, and Enterprise
Holly Samuelson, Frank Apeseche
How can one optimize the benefits of environmental or social sustainability while generating a higher return on investment in buildings? Where are…
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Planning for Climate Change: Scarcity, Abundance, and the Idea of the Future
Climate change presents a range of complex challenges for urban planning and design. This class will explore the conditions planners face in…
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Energetics of Urbanization
Two significant discourses on energy and urbanization are converging, with increasingly parallel questions and concerns. First, a discourse on extended urbanization…
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Community Development: Past, Present, and Future
This course provides a critical overview of conceptual and applied approaches to community development. It examines evolving patterns and drivers of urban…
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Urban Transportation Planning and Implementation
This course reviews urban transportation planning and implementation over the past fifty years within the US with a particular focus on the Boston Metropolitan area…
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Urban Design for Planners
Course Objectives This seminar course introduces physical planners to the approaches, techniques and tools of urban design necessary to structure the…
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International Humanitarian Response (at HSPH)
Stephanie Kayden, Daniel Maxwell
This course offers practical training in the complex issues and field skills needed to engage in humanitarian work. Students will gain familiarity with the…
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Creating Real Estate Ventures: a Legal Perspective
The course will examine how a commercial real estate deal is put together to move a project from conception to completion. The…
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Affordable and Mixed-Income Housing Development, Finance, and Management
Explores issues relating to the development, financing, and management of housing affordable to low and moderate income households. Examines community-based development corporations, public housing authorities,…
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Market Analysis and Urban Economics
This course focuses on the built environment and land-use policy. The course combines readings from the real estate economics academic literature with…
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Urban Governance and the Politics of Planning in the Developing World
This course starts from the premise that urban politics and governance arrangements shape the definition, form and practice of planning and therefore…
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Mapping: Geographic Representation and Speculation
Maps do not represent reality, they create it. As a fundamental part of the design process, the act of mapping results in highly authored views…
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Housing Tropes* and the Role of Design
This course will focus on conceptualizing the role of design and the agency of architecture and planning in the process of housing…
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Beyond Reconstruction: Mexico and the 2017 Earthquakes
In September of 2017 Mexico experienced a serious of devastating earthquakes affecting not only Mexico City but also several states in the…
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Independent Study by Candidates for Master’s Degrees
Sai Balakrishnan, Martin Bechthold, Daniel D’Oca, Craig Douglas, Kiel Moe, Charles Waldheim, Ewa Harabasz, Allen Sayegh, Christopher Herbert, Michael Hooper, Alistair McIntosh, Joan Busquets, Diane Davis, Sonja Dümpelmann, Stephen Gray, Jock Herron, Oana Stanescu, Megan Panzano, Peter Rowe, John Peterson, Andres Sevtsuk, Christine Smith, Andrew Holder, Jennifer Bonner, Abby Spinak, Andrew Witt, Chris Reed, Tomás dePaor, Jesse M. Keenan, Rafael Moneo, Susan Snyder, Edward Eigen, Jon Lott, Jonathan Grinham, Preston Scott Cohen, Bing Wang, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Ray Torto, Panagiotis Michalatos, Niklas Maak
Students may take a maximum of 8 units with different GSD instructors in this course series. 9201 must be taken for either 2, or 4…
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Independent Thesis in Satisfaction of the Degree MAUD, MLAUD, or MUP
Following participation in the department’s fall thesis preparation seminar (GSD 9204), the spring term of the second year sees students complete, defend and submit their…
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MDES Open Project II
“Open Projects” is a two-semester course sequence for second year MDes students. As the graduating requirement for students enrolled in the 4-Semester Track of the…
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Independent Study by Candidates for Doctoral Degrees
Diane Davis, Peter Rowe, K. Michael Hays, Eve Blau, Alex Krieger, Jock Herron
9502 must be taken for either 2, or 4 units. Under faculty guidance, the student conducts an independent reading program and formulates a thesis proposal.
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Thesis in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design
Martin Bechthold, Mohsen Mostafavi, Neil Brenner, Richard Peiser, Antoine Picon, Peter Rowe
Thesis in Satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.
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Discourse and Methods II
K. Michael Hays, Catherine Ingraham
This seminar is designed as an introduction to some of the major critical approaches and methodologies that have shaped the history and theory of the…