Creating Environmental Markets
The Laredo Resilience Project
There is a way out of the climate box we have created, though resistance to the necessary ecological transformation remains intense. This semester, Creating Environmental Markets will examine alternative means of achieving environmental restoration and climate adaptation through economic incentives and jobs using Laredo, Texas, as our case study. Laredo is the largest inland port along the US/Mexico border and the nation's third-busiest port among more than 450 airports, seaports, and border crossings, with $299.4 billion in total trade with the world in 2022. It is a mid-sized city of approximately 300,000 located on the Rio Grande River and hosts tens of thousands of trucks daily hauling the robust commerce between the U.S. and Mexico
A south Texas community, Laredo also faces the consequences of a heating climate, including extended drought, increasingly hot and occasionally catastrophic temperatures, source water insecurity, heat island impacts, rare but increasing flood events, and significant issues around environmental justice. A heating planet is also forcing people to migrate. Laredo receives thousands of migrants a day seeking asylum into the US. A 2021 study by the Texas Water Development Board and Texas A&M University concluded the city will face severe water shortages by 2040. In 2022, the two reservoirs on which Laredo and surrounding smaller communities depend, the Falcon Reservoir in Zapata County and the Amistad Reservoir in Webb County, were at 9% and 19% of capacity due to drought. Add that politics in Texas, particularly for environmental projects and justice as well as for a community whose population is 95% Hispanic with 45% below the poverty line, is difficult.
As a project for the spring semester 2024 Creating Environmental Markets class, Laredo, Texas, presents both significant environmental challenges and opportunities to explore innovative market-driven approaches that synthesized through design strategies will attempt to envision a more resilient future in Laredo. Working directly with the Rio Grande International Study Center (RGISC), the regional environmental advocate, we will investigate the historical context of Laredo, particularly focusing on its environmental past, its current environmental challenges, and the anticipated consequences of climate change. We will investigate how arroyos, wetlands, grasslands, surface water, and ground water once worked, how the city grew, why and where its commercial and industrial centers grew, the history of the Rio Grande, sources of water supply, ground water stores, and the consequent environmental context of the city and the region.
From this base and using the tools of environmental restoration and sustainability provided in class, we will construct a water resilient plan for Laredo in a Project Report that will enhance water security while restoring natural systems and habitat, generate income as an aspect of restoration, reduce heat island effect, increase flood management and control options, and provide new job opportunities.
Students will travel to Laredo and will investigate issues in teams. Together, using your skills, we will produce a case study for the City and RGISC, recommending a prioritized path forward for the City. The cost will be $200 (term-billed) plus meals and incidentals. Travel will take place February 18-23.
This course has a travel component. Please see the GSD Travel and Safety Guidelines website for relevant policies.
Modern Housing and Urban Districts: Concepts, Cases, and Comparisons
This course deals with ‘modern housing’ covering a period primarily from the 1900s to the present. It engages with ‘urban districts’ in so far as the housing projects under discussion contribute to the making of these districts and are in turn shaped by the districts in which they are placed. Cases draw from an international survey with emphasis on Europe, North America, and East Asia, although also including examples from the Americas, South and Southeast Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, and Oceania. The course introduces approximately 240 cases along with frameworks for organizing and thinking with this corpus.
We begin with two broad surveys of concepts germane to the discussion and design of contemporary housing, including 1) ideas of community and what constitutes a neighborhood across historical contexts and cultural milieu, and 2) territories, types, interiors, and other landscapes dealing with the constraints and dimensions of the external context and internal life. These are followed by cases, organized by key characteristics of the building or external context they engage. In each, contemporary examples provide the primary focus, while precedents within and adjacent to architecture are introduced to contextualize historical circumstances and trace the evolution of ideas. In Spring 2024, the categories include: 1) urban block shapers, 2) superblock configurations, 3) tall towers, 4) big buildings, 5) mat buildings, 6) housing and landscapes, 7) infrastructural engagements, 8) infill and puntal interventions, 9) housing special populations, and 10) temporary and incremental housing.
Each class is organized around a i) lecture, ii) student presentation, and iii) discussion. Beyond weekly participation and contribution to in-class discussions, the main deliverable of the course is the research, analysis, and presentation of case study projects. Students will be paired and assigned the cases at the beginning of the semester. The presenting students will meet with the instructor one and two weeks before the presentation. Short readings may also be assigned to augment weekly discussions.
Public Finance for Planners: Creating Equitable & Sustainable Communities
Infrastructure challenges are significant and rising. To meet these challenges, urban planners will need to acquire foundational knowledge and skills in the public finance discipline and gain a basic awareness of how such tools and levers are used by city leaders to raise money to fund infrastructure, neighborhood redevelopment plans, and other new capital projects. This course will introduce students to the spectrum of public finance strategies and approaches that are available to cities, states and localities and will elevate how each strategy can be considered in the development of urban planning strategies to enhance an urban planners work and position projects to achieve strong equity, sustainability, and other place-based outcomes. The goal of the course will be to educate students on tactical ways that public finance principles can be integrated into the urban planning process. To that end, students will learn how to make choices that position an urban planning project for stronger funding, for stronger economic development outcomes and to achieve growth that is inclusive. The course will combine various pedagogical methods that include lecture, discussion, and exercises that challenge students to consider their role as advisors to leaders in a city. Throughout the semester, students will learn how to evaluate the impact of alternative resource mobilization and public finance avenues that an urban planner may encounter by examining real projects. No prior course work or experience in public finance or economic development is necessary for students to succeed in the course, as the course will provide students with the necessary foundation to understand core concepts in the domains of public finance and economic development that will be covered.
Urban Design for Planners
This seminar course introduces planners and others interested in urban development to the history, principles, and processes of urban design and its indelible impact on people, places, and cities.
The course explores the role of urban design in creating beautiful, just, and resilient places. It considers the actors involved and the intersections and interplay with architecture, landscape architecture, public policy, real estate development, urban planning, and other disciplines. It examines the influence of culture and history, economics, and politics, and the benefits of advocacy and public engagement to advance ambitious civic visions and projects with social impact.
Over the course of the semester, students will gain an understanding of the history and evolution of urban design and the modes and methods of practice through readings and presentations, conversations with practitioners, and interactive class discussions and workshops. They will acquire knowledge, learn about and access resources and tools, and develop and practice skills to navigate and participate in urban design processes and projects.
Students will develop and refine skills of observation, exploration, and inquiry via semester-long research, evaluation, and documentation of a Boston development site. Weekly prompts and workshops will help students integrate, apply, and communicate ideas and lessons learned from readings and discussions. Students will share and discuss progress with the class via informal presentations and pin-ups.
The primary audience for this class is urban planners but it is open to anyone interested in learning about design and the urban environment. Urban design is, by nature, experiential and visual. Prior experience with design, planning, and visual representation is not required, however a keen curiosity and desire to observe, explore, and learn is expected.
U. S. Housing Markets, Problems, and Policies
This course examines the operation of U.S. housing markets, the principal housing problems facing the nation, and policy approaches to address them within the existing political, regulatory and market contexts. The course is structured around five central areas of concern for housing policy: the challenge of producing housing affordable for lower-income households generally; how best to subsidize rental housing, address homelessness, and provide protection for low- and moderate-income tenants; how to support successful homeownership for low-income households and people of color; the causes, consequences and policy responses to the high degree of residential segregation by race/ethnicity and income; and how housing policy operates at the neighborhood scale to address concerns about revitalization, gentrification, climate change, health and schools.
Each section of the course will develop a detailed understanding of the nature of the problem, how the operation of housing markets either produce or fail to address the problem, introduce the principal federal, state and local policy approaches available to address the problem, and wrestle with critical policy questions that arise in choosing how best to craft a response to the problem.
The goal of the course is to build both a foundation of knowledge and a critical perspective needed to diagnose the genesis of the nation’s housing problems, to identify the potential policy levers for addressing these failures, and to assess the relative merits of alternative approaches. Class sessions will be largely a lecture format but will include ample time for class discussion. Each section of the course will include several guests to provide a range of perspectives on the topics covered, including those from the public and nonprofit sectors, researchers, developers, and the communities served.
Students will be expected to come to classes prepared to be fully engaged participants in the discussions. Over the course of the semester, students will be required to prepare periodic reviews of assigned readings and prepare questions for guests which will be shared on Canvas. The principal assignments for the class will be a mid-term paper analyzing a housing challenge in a jurisdiction of the student’s choosing and a final paper assessing policy options for addressing the challenge and proposing a course of action. The course is intended for graduate students with an interest in US housing policy, although no previous background in housing policy or disciplinary training is required.
This course is jointly listed with HKS as SUP 670.
Urban Design and the Color-Line
We cannot talk about physical infrastructures in the United States without also talking about race. In this seminar/workshop, students will examine the role that race and class have played (and will continue to play) in the design and production of physical projects. It provides tools for: (1) interrogating design’s contributions to, and complicity with, structural and infrastructural racism; and, (2) developing intentionally anti-racist, equity-focused research and design methodologies that produce more equitable public spaces.
Reflecting on NYC High Line’s social and economic challenges, in 2017 Friends of the High Line (FHL) established the High Line Network (HLN), a peer-to-peer community of infrastructure reuse projects that spans North America. Network partners at various stages of development lend their technical assistance and advice to one another about how to advance racial equity in their respective communities. Student research and recommendations will support these efforts ranging from ensuring social inclusion, managing gentrification to avoid displacement, institutionalizing public programming, and negotiating city revenues for project development.
This limited enrollment project-based seminar provides graduate students with a framework for unpacking the making and remaking of physical infrastructures with a deeper understanding of the relationship between systemic racism and the production of space. This course requires weekly readings, writing, discussion, and engagement with a US based civil society organization, as well as the creation of graphic materials for a single infrastructure reuse project. There is no requisite background to take this course.
Project Management, Construction Management, New Technologies
This course focuses on three crucial aspects of real estate practice: project management, construction management, and new technologies.
The project management portion will cover the skills needed to manage the many disciplines and concurrent tasks that take place from start of a development project to finish. The class will explore multiple project management styles that can each produce successful or less successful outcomes. Examples will be drawn from industry.
The construction management portion will address how owners, developers, owner’s representatives and/or property managers can best manage the construction process. A visit to a major development project will serve as a live case study.
New technologies will explore recent technologies being utilized in the real estate environment including prop tech, smart buildings, artificial intelligence, construction management software, robotics. The course will ask the fundamental question: when and how is it better to use new technologies and what are the risks associated with such use. How can real estate catch-up to other industries that use AI and other software to support better outcomes?
Enrollment in this course is limited to students in the GSD Master in Real Estate program. The course schedule is January 2 through January 19, from 11-12:30 and 1-2pm daily. There is no class on January 15, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The course will take place in Gund Hall room 516.
Real Estate Law
This course examines, through the lens of the legal documents involved, the real estate law concepts relevant to the development, acquisition and operations of real estate ventures. We will review the major stages of commercial real estate projects including securing control of land, sourcing and raising equity, completing predevelopment steps such as agreements for design and construction and obtaining governmental permits for both initial construction and adaptive reuse, securing construction financing, leasing and other aspects of operating the project, and realizing capital returns from refinance and/or sale. A focus of the course will be an in-depth examination of public laws regulating real estate development. We also will consider steps which may be taken in the legal arena when the unexpected happens and a deal goes sideways, such as bankruptcy or litigation.
For each stage, we will analyze core real estate law concepts in actual negotiated agreements, including purchase and sale contracts, joint venture agreements, construction and design contracts, construction loan agreements, tenant leases, and permanent loan documentation. The course will include a mix of lectures, discussion of transaction documents and other course readings, individual exercises, and panel discussions with real estate professionals involved in major projects in the greater Boston area. A highlight of the course will be team mock negotiations and role-playing exercises relating to securing control of the land, formation of a joint venture, construction loans, and leasing.
The course goal is to enable students to get deep inside the series of transactions–and their legal documentation—involved in real estate projects, to understand key business and real estate law issues embedded in the legal documents, to gain familiarity with how these issues are commonly resolved, and to recognize how to manage legal risk and the risk/reward calculation.
Students who took SES 5434 cannot take this course for credit.
Cities by Design
Cities by Design is concerned with the in-depth and longitudinal examination of urban conditions in and among select cities in the world. The broad aims are: to engage in a comparative study for the purpose of broadening definitions of what it is to be urban; to identify characteristics that render particular cities distinct; to understand the manner in which geography, locational circumstances, and related infrastructural improvements both constrain and promote opportunities for city development; and to gain insight into the role of human agencies, planning institutions, and design cultures in shaping cities and their role in broader regions.
In Spring 2024, the cities under examination are Boston, Barcelona, Berlin, Los Angeles, São Paulo, Copenhagen, Shanghai, Aleppo, and Mumbai. Each will be the subject of two in-person lectures or a combination of asynchronous lectures and an in-person discussion with the speaker. In addition to city-specific lectures, broader comparative frameworks are provided by three lectures on Implementation, Metropolitan Spatial Dynamics, and Historic Conservation.
The class is organized around a twice-a-week cadence of lectures, discussions, and debates. Beyond participation and contribution to in-class discussions, the main deliverables of the course are student debates around city-specific topics mooted by the presenters. Students will be grouped and assigned the debate topic at the beginning of the semester and meet with the instructor one and two weeks before the debate. Cities by Design is required and limited to Master of Architecture and Landscape Architecture in Urban Design students.
This course is required for and limited to students in the GSD Master of Urban Design programs.
The Development Project
The course places students in the role of developer of an international or domestic site for which they will produce project proposals that meet financial, market, regulatory, design, environmental, and social metrics for successful development. The interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of real estate practice will be experienced by real estate students working in teams with urban design, architecture, planning, and landscape architecture students enrolled by lottery in two option studios expressly paired with the class. Real estate and option studio students will visit their international or domestic sites early in the semester and meet with stakeholders. The final review will reveal fully realized and realistic development proposals.
This course is required for and limited to sudents in the GSD Master in Real Estate Program.
This course is only open to students in the GSD Master in Real Estate Program.