“Cities,” says Nestor Davidson, Emma Bloomberg Professor of Real Estate at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), allow “tens of millions of strangers with no prior connections and ties to live and work in close proximity.” They are one of the “most complex human creations,” he explains; and yet, what shapes them remains invisible to most of us.
Davidson was recently appointed director of the GSD’s Master of Real Estate (MRE) program. He has spent much of his career studying and teaching urban law—the regulations, policies, and agreements that underpin our cities—as well as land use and environmental law, the legal and regulatory aspects of the built environment, and how local, state, and federal governments determine individual property rights. His work spans everything from the “sharing economy” that urban dwellers access through apps like Uber, to the interpretation of the 5th Amendment to the Constitution, which mandates that the government cannot take property without “just compensation.”
His courses have attracted students from across the GSD’s departments, as well as the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School (HBS). Talking about these issues with an interdisciplinary group of students offers them the opportunity to understand the law, “mechanically, conceptually, and institutionally,” says Davidson.
This year, students tackled a range of issues around housing access and affordability, and how those issues intersect with design and public policy—knowledge that’s critical to anyone designing a project at large scale today, says Davidson, particularly for planners, who are often on the forefront of writing policy. Public infrastructure, public-private development, subsidies, community development, and public engagement are all part of that conversation.
“The GSD’s MRE program allows students to address these complexities in real time,” he says. A signature element of the program, a course known as “The Development Project,” is taught in tandem with a GSD option studio. Taking on the role of developer, MRE students collaborate directly with peers studying architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning and design, engaging in the types of conversations and negotiations that unfold in real development processes. The experiential learning course gives students the opportunity to learn both the complex concepts, as well as the practical tools, that they will need when they graduate.
Davidson developed his knowledge and experience through scholarship as well as the practice of commercial real estate law at Latham & Watkins LLP. He also served at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, on the Board of the New York State Housing Finance Agency, and as chair of the New York City Rent Guidelines Board. Before joining the GSD in 2025, he was the Albert A. Walsh Professor of Real Estate, Land Use and Property Law at Fordham Law School, where he founded the Urban Law Center.
In his forthcoming book, Cities in Law: Urbanism as a Legal Phenomenon, under contract with Cambridge University Press, Davidson focuses on urban law, a field that he explains has undergone changes in recent decades. In the 1960s and 70s, urban law was a recognized legal field, but in subsequent years, it “fractured into a number of sub-disciplines such as state and local government.” Today, he says, urban law encompasses land use, public finance, education, policing, and local services.
Every encounter we have with businesses, law enforcement, and other citizens—from hiring someone on TaskRabbit to build a shelf in our home, to buying a drink at a restaurant, to getting a parking ticket—is influenced by the regulations of the city. “Cities are where we encounter the law most directly,” he explains. “How people understand justice—the fairness of our legal system—is shaped by their everyday encounters, mostly at the local level.”
The denser the city, the more stakeholders are affected at the block, neighborhood, and municipal levels, he explains, the more important its legal infrastructure. Davidson’s work could allow designers and planners to better understand the invisible infrastructure that they navigate every day.
“What intrigues me about doing this work within the Graduate School of Design,” says Davidson, “is that urban law is a lens through which to think about the implications of law in urban governance and how we structure the allocation of authority between cities, the state, the national government, and even internationally; horizontal relationships between cities and suburbs, as well as regionalism; and the internal governance and daily life of cities.”
These elements are impacted by and affect our spatial relationships to cities and towns—how we interact with each other within them and how we connect to other cities and towns, for example the design of public transportation, private homes, parks, and schools. The built and designed environment—architecture and landscape architecture—together with public policies and laws define each place and the ways we envision people coming together and defining their privacy within them. One issue where this becomes most evident is affordable housing, which Davidson says is at the center of many debates about urban policy today and is an important component of the MRE program.
“I’ve studied housing my entire career,” he says, “and today, there’s a much richer conversation about zoning, sustainability, and affordability. We’re going back to first principles, as we periodically do, and are in the middle of a period of re-thinking. That’s exciting for me as a scholar and teacher.”
The MRE program was founded in 2022 by Jerold Kayden, Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design. Seeing a need for a new approach to the study of real estate, Kayden aimed to define the program as “transformational in its recognition that future success in real estate will depend not only on traditional financial and management skills but on a profound understanding of and responsiveness to the new dynamics of social and environmental conditions.” MRE students develop the skills necessary to address issues including housing affordability, sustainability, and AI, as well as the ability to adapt to ongoing challenges that arise in the future.
“I’m in the enviable position,” says Davidson, “of coming into a program that is relatively new but very successful from the beginning. The vision for the program, which takes a deep interdisciplinary approach to design, finance, law, and policy, is distinctive in the ecosystem of real estate programs around the country. I’m fortunate to be able to build on the strong foundation that Jerold Kayden established.”
As program director, Davidson anticipates continuing to deepen engagement with other programs at the GSD, meeting the new challenges that have arisen as a result of the dawning “complete technological transformation.” In his view, “artificial intelligence and new spatial analytical technologies and data sources can inform excellence in real estate, and how we can continue to prepare our students to be both be conversant and critical about emerging technology.”
In addition, he aims to deepen ties between the MRE program and other parts of the university, building on the interdisciplinary collaborations that are underway, for example, in GSD courses and collaborations such as the annual Real Estate Symposium organized by GSD students with peers from HBS and Harvard Law School.
“For students across campus,” says Davidson, “real estate may be a really interesting bridge to a larger conversation about design and the built environment. That’s the bridge that I want to help build.”