Public and Private Development
GSD 5103 / KSG HUT-268, Fall/Spring

Cities are developed by an elaborate blend of public and private actions. This has not always been the case; in the past, there was a clearer delineation between and shared understanding about public and private roles and responsibilities in the development process. Today, however, development is increasingly accomplished under conditions of blurred boundaries and surprising reallocations as public and private parties participate to a greater extent in what each other does.

Government becomes involved in private development through direct and tax subsidies, land acquisition and disposition, strategic provision of capital infrastructure and facilities, and intensive regulatory review. Governments may even become financial partners in the development structure, sharing in a private project's cash flow. The modern developer assumes a 'public' personae at strategic moments, agreeing to provide capital infrastructure and facilities, social amenities, and municipal services previously financed and delivered by local government. She now engages government and citizens in project planning and design in ways unthinkable less than a generation ago.

This enhanced intermingling of public and private roles and responsibilities raises novel and challenging issues for urban planners, designers, and policy makers. It demands invention or tailoring of analytical frameworks and techniques, creation of new legal and institutional arrangements, and sophisticated calculation of political relationships. For example, public actors must comprehend and appreciate the financial realities of private development and deal structures in order to negotiate successful public-private partnerships or impose reasonable regulatory burdens. Private actors must interpret a complex spectrum of public goals and acquire navigational skills befitting an environment in which public claims to private profit may be expected to continue. Both players must understand how the new equations reassign entrepreneurial risk and public interest oversight, and how such reassignments spur intended and unintended consequences for the physical, economic, and social development of cities.

This course examines, through lectures, discussions, case studies, and exercises, the issues, analytical frameworks, and methods of public and private development in American metropolitan areas.

Part I: Analytical Frameworks and Techniques, discusses the financial, economic, legal, institutional, political, and other urban planning frameworks and techniques necessary to make decisions about public and private development.

Part II: Public Provision of Subsidies, explores the array of direct and indirect subsidies used to implement public and private development.

Part III: Public Provision of Land and Infrastructure, analyzes public provision of non-cash, less transparent elements commonly used by government and sought by developers to encourage and direct development activities.

Part IV: Private Provision of Public Benefits, examines how physical infrastructure, social amenities, and municipal services provided by private developers are obtained through special regulatory and taxation regimes. Several guest speakers engaged in current or recent public-private development efforts will present actual projects to the class.

Social Spaces in the Academy II
GSD 9206UPD, Seminar, Fall 2008

Building on initial results from a provost-funded research study conducted several years ago by the first offering of this research seminar, this second offering updates and deepens the examination of social spaces at academic institutions using Harvard University as the case study. Social spaces — indoor and outdoor public places where people engage in a variety of informal activities - permeate the academy. Social spaces include dining rooms, dormitory common rooms, classrooms, libraries, athletic facilities, performance halls, student centers, and other physical places. This research seminar focuses on a specially defined subset of social spaces: indoor and outdoor places open to and usable by students, faculty, and staff for informal activities such as meeting friends, people watching, eating a sandwich, or reading a book. Such social spaces may be intentionally designed, like the cafe at Lamont Library, or may arise spontaneously, like the area of intersecting pathways next to the boulders in front of the Science Center.

The course operates as a research study with faculty and students serving as members of the research team. Enrollment is limited to 20 students. The class normally meets weekly for two hours. Much of the work is conducted in the field, individually or in small teams of students and faculty. Researchers investigate the interplay of social activities and physical settings through methods that include user interviews, activity mapping, videography, and spatial analysis of selected locations across the campus. Class discussions and work sessions pull together the research study. Reading assignments provide students with theoretical and methodological backgrounds and skills, as well as knowledge about other academic campuses, to conduct the research. Products will include proposals, plans, designs, and a webpage including a comprehensive relational database. The course counts as four units, and the workload is designed not to exceed what is expected of an average four-unit course.

Advanced Topics in Design, Law, Policy
GSD 5312, Spring

This workshop provides students with an opportunity to examine in depth a legal technique or issue having a significant effect on the design and planning of the built environment. Empirical research, legal analysis, and other relevant methodological approaches will be emphasized.

Prerequisites: Permission of instructor based on previous background and interest.

Social Spaces in the Academy
GSD 9206UPD, Seminar, Spring 2005
with Martin Zogran

Summary

This research seminar examines social spaces in the academy using Harvard University as a case study. For purposes of this seminar and research study, social spaces are defined as outdoor and indoor physical places usable by any member of the university community for purposes of such informal activities as meeting friends, reading, dispensing information, resting, performing, and eating. Sometimes, social spaces are intentionally designed, like the array of boulders directly outside the entrance to the Science Center. Sometimes, they arise spontaneously, like the area created by the intersecting pathways next to the boulders. Sometimes, social spaces serve several functions. For example, the steps in front of Widener Library are both social space and corridor of egress and ingress for the library itself. Social spaces may be recognized and used by individuals as such, or may require programmatic, design, and amenity interventions to become usable, or more usable, places. Although social spaces in the academy may also be usable by individuals not formally part of the defined university community, they need not be to qualify as social spaces.

Research Study

The specific research study is organized into four phases: identification, representation, analysis, and conceptualization.

First, the research study identifies every social space at Harvard University. Dividing the Harvard campus into zones (initially excluding the Longwood campus), researchers comb every square foot of Harvard-owned and controlled property to locate actual and potential social spaces. In some cases, the character and discreteness of the space isapparent, in others judgments about utility and boundaries will be necessary. Is Harvard Yard, for example, one social space or many? Researchers interview individuals responsible for controlling different territories of the university to unearth their attitudes and rules with regard to space under their control. For example, some libraries invite social space use, while others expressly do not.

Second, the research study represents every space using uniform graphic and text vocabularies, including digital images, site plans, sketches, maps, tables, objective profiles, and other devices. The research study develops maps showing spaces in relation to one another and to other aspects of the Harvard campus and surrounding areas in Cambridge and Boston.

Third, the research study analyzes every space in terms of its actual and potential use, using specially tailored post-occupancy evaluation techniques of user surveys, in-depth interviews, temporal and time-lapse observational photography conducted at different times of year and day, and activity mapping. A core group of representative social spaces undergo heightened analysis. Evaluative frameworks for spaces with potential, rather than actual, use are also developed and applied.

Fourth, the research study conceptualizes ways in which Harvard’s social spaces may enhance the experiences of Harvard students, faculty, and staff in their daily lives. Such goals as encouraging social interactions and sparking creative activities are part of this conceptualization effort. The study also considers how social spaces may serve the goal of encouraging interactions between members of the Harvard community and members of the surrounding communities of Cambridge and Boston. Specific proposals are developed to understand Harvard’s social spaces as part of a system or network of connected usable places rather than an archipelago of random dots within the Harvard campus.

Course Requirements

The course operates as a research study with faculty and students serving as the research team. Enrollment is limited to 20 students. The class meets weekly for two hours at a time to be determined that does not conflict with class schedules of participating students and that serves the timing of the research. Much of the work is conducted in the field, by individual students or small teams of students and faculty. Class discussions and work sessions will pull together the research study. Reading assignments will provide students with theoretical and methodological backgrounds to conduct the research. The course counts as four units, and the workload is designed not to exceed what is expected of an average four-unit course.

Design, Law, Policy
GSD 5311, Fall 2003

Prerequisites: GSD 5201, GSD 5206, or equivalent background.

Law has a powerful imprint on the design of the built environment. As much as technological innovation, market calculation, artistic creativity, and cultural norms, law shapes constructed objects through application of rules and precedents embodied in statutes, ordinances, regulations, and judicial opinions. Such legal mechanisms as design review, zoning, subdivision controls, historic preservation ordinances, building codes, and infrastructure standards, among others, intentionally or inadvertently influence the look and feel of communities in ways not fully appreciated by professionals, scholars, and the public. This course explores the goals, rationales, and approaches of law as it affects the design of the built environment.

Planning and Environmental Law
GSD 5206 / KSG HUT-263, Fall 1998

I. COURSE DESCRIPTION

Population growth, demographic change, economic and technological transformation, and evolving private development patterns are placing new and increasing pressures on land in cities, suburbs, and rural areas. As a scarce resource, land triggers an inevitable competition for its possession and use. Because most land in the United States is privately owned, the market conducts much of this competition through its customary price-setting and allocative mechanisms. At the same time, because use of land by one party inevitably affects the interests of neighbors and society, and because market mechanisms alone are frequently insufficient to protect or advance such interests, an enveloping legal web—local ordinances, federal and state constitutions and statutes, judicial opinions, administrative regulations, private legal agreements—has emerged to guide the use and appearance of our built and natural environments.

This legal web has fundamentally affected the way we live and work. Zoning ordinances, subdivision regulations, environmental laws, design review, and other legal restrictions deliberately or inadvertently influence the planning and design of the environment. For example, zoning's minimum lot area rules influence whether houses are clustered together or scattered, height and setback restrictions influence whether office towers are bulky or sleek, single use requirements influence whether neighborhoods are socially and economically diverse or homogeneous. Federal and state environmental laws influence whether wetlands are filled or preserved, whether endangered species survive or struggle, whether air and water resources are more or less polluted, and whether open space is maintained or depleted.

Over the past decade, two substantial critiques of planning and environmental laws have emerged. The first argues that the legal texts and institutional processes partially responsible for crafting the look, feel, and configuration of American cities, suburbs, and rural areas, too often ignore the needs of modern-day families, new work patterns, and emerging socio-economic currents. Under this view, extant laws are seen as inhibiting, rather than encouraging, the creation of robust communities and social discourse at the heart of America's democratic vision. At its heart, the critique indicts law, and by implication, lawmakers, for a failure to appreciate that the universe of choice is substantially larger than that suggested by traditional models.

The second critique argues that planning and environmental laws have taken too heavy a toll on the exercise of private property rights. Proponents of this position argue that government, in pursuit of land-use and environmental goals, has reduced the efficiency of the American economy while unfairly impinging on the rights of individuals. They propose cost-benefit vetting of legislative and administrative actions, and monetary compensation when regulation goes too far. Defenders of government regulation stress that property owners, living in and benefiting from a civil and interdependent society, must accept some deprivation in order to satisfy conditions for an efficient and equitable society, a sustainable natural environment, and a sound public budget. Recent legislative initiatives in favor of property owners at national and state levels appear to reflect passions of the moment. Recent judicial responses reflect longer-term movement informed by bedrock constitutional principles, customs, and norms.

This course examines the legislative, constitutional, and common law context for the use of land by private and public owners in the United States. The purpose of the course is to provide students with a basic understanding of key theories, techniques, and institutions, and to suggest how law's approach to land-use and environmental issues is similar to or different from that employed by other disciplines and professions. No prior legal education or experience is assumed.

The course is organized into three parts. The first part sets forth and analyzes basic definitions, theories, and rationales for private property and government regulation, and measures these concepts in the context of zoning law, the principal land-use regulatory tool in the United States. The second part reviews the constitutional framework governing enactment and exercise of planning and environmental laws. The third part explores the rationales, operation, and judicial receptivity to other current legal mechanisms of land-use and environmental planning and regulation.

Among the themes addressed by the course are the following:

Rationales for government's power to plan and regulate private development;
S cope of private property rights and their relation to community rights;
Intended and unintended impacts of law on the design of the built and natural environment;
Overlap between planning and environmental law;
rule versus discretion;
Command-and-control versus incentive-based regulatory approaches;
Institutional and political competencies for planning and regulation at national, state, regional, local, and neighborhood levels;
Costs of growth, and who should pay;
Evaluative approaches: benefits/costs, efficiency/equity, stakeholders;
Costs of growth and who pays.

The course specifically addresses the following legal techniques:

zoning;
subdivision controls;
newer zoning: cluster zoning, PUDs, incentive zoning, transfer of development rights, performance zoning, and "new urbanism" codes;
local growth management (growth caps, moratoria, etc.);
state and regional growth management and planning and regulatory laws (Florida, Vermont, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington);
environmental impact assessments;
endangered species law;
wetlands law;
solid waste law;
exactions and impact fees;
inclusionary zoning and linkage;
design review and guidelines;
historic preservation;
billboard/sign controls;
adult entertainment controls;
eminent domain.