Planning Sustainable Built Environments
Modern infrastructure that invisibly delivers clean water and reliable power is often held up as a norm. Yet, in reality, it often fails, or even fails to exist, depending on where it is located and who it is intended to serve. In the face of accelerating climate change and inequality, disruptions to modern infrastructural systems are becoming more and more frequent. This suggests the need for a paradigm shift in how built environment fields envision, plan and design for sustainable settlements and the infrastructure systems which are integral to them. This course will begin with a critical historical grounding in sustainability, interrogating what previous framings have achieved and how sustainability interfaces with the current emphasis on resilience. We will then tap into current infrastructural theory, gleaning useful concepts for thinking through infrastructural interdependencies, disparities, cascading failures and exchanges between the Global North and South. We will bring these concepts to contemporary cases of failures, from power outages to water system disruptions, examining the extent to which these are a result of policy, technical, or physical limitations and the role of underlying structural processes such as racism and colonialism. Building on this foundation in what is not working, we will turn to emerging solutions, drawing from theory and case studies. We will engage with current discussions of passive survivability, safe-to-fail systems, and decentralization to envision alternative approaches to sustainability and the infrastructural systems that help shape it. In the final project, students will propose a pathway for scaling up an emerging alternative in an infrastructural domain and location of choice. Major assignments will be individual, however we will engage in a collaborative process to develop the tools to think through alternatives and to ultimately glean cross-cutting tactics and themes to take into future work.
Creating Environmental Markets
There is a way out of the climate box we have created, though resistance to the necessary ecological transformation remains intense. Sunk investments in existing infrastructure, broadly accepted design and economic theory, and the lifelong operations employment it has provided make the foundation of such resistance. Creating Environmental Markets will examine alternative capital markets based in regulatory requirements but offering opportunities to use trades to restore ecology while providing economic incentives and jobs.
The climate problems we once anticipated have become a connected series of current crises: intense heat, extended drought, potable water shortages, almost spontaneous fires, floods, food shortages, enormous tornadoes and hurricanes, acute cold…. The prognosis for the coming decades is that these phenomena will get worse, yet our responses remain mostly mundane. We repair, rebuild, extend, and expand essentially the same 19th Century energy and water infrastructure that put us in this climate box, evidently expecting a different outcome.
If we are to meet and overcome the climate challenges we have created, incentivizing environmental restoration over broad landscapes, from individual site designs to entire cityscapes, is essential. The law as currently interpreted will not save us, but some combination of law and regulation together with markets creating economic incentives favoring ecological restoration of natural systems could. In addition to recognizing the damage we have done we need a clear conception of required ecological repair. Students will be introduced to that clear conception while examining a regulation-based market to incentivize ecological repair at scale, fostering the necessary energy and water infrastructure change.
This class is intended for MLA, Planning, and Design students because their skills provide them the insights necessary to make such markets work, from individual site designs to cityscape master plans and establishing trading parameters. They will participate in the construction of a water market for the Boston metropolitan region, understanding the ecological principles and restoration objectives driving market creation, and examining the politics and realities of using regulation to create such a market. They will also examine the benefits of and potential for dramatic restorative change. In their course case studies, students will use the information from the class to examine opportunities in self-selected cities around the world.
The (New) Image of the City
The rest of the 21st century is being drawn right now. More than ever before, organizations and individuals rely on projective images that indicate their aspirations or goals while simultaneously stimulating an audience's imagination and emotions. At the same time, imagery is leveraged to uncover, celebrate, or critique our latent urban structures. In the wake of COVID-19, the value of a designer's ability to illustrate new ways of life has increased as we collectively imagine future 'new normals'. And yet, designers may also need to prepare to move away from the pre-pandemic aspiration for the 'perfect' or 'resolved' towards more blurriness, openness, or dynamism to relate to a public audience wary of false promises of past projects. Designers with a robust representational repertoire will be those best suited to communicate their ideas and impact change in the coming generation.
This course investigates how society perceives cities, their landscapes and architecture, and the designer's role in mobilizing imagery to digest existing conditions and project new urban possibilities. Part historical dive, part technical workshop, the class moves between investigations into the historical development of cities through image and instruction on the fundamental two and three-dimensional representational techniques involved in visualizing the vast array of inevitably convoluted and undetermined aspects of urbanity. The class will review how the city's evolution has been represented over time in urban design, landscape architecture, architecture, art, politics, and culture while developing new techniques and methods for representing latent urban conditions and uncertain futures.
Structured around participatory lectures, discussions, and exercises, the course necessitates a student's ability to consume, interpret, and produce. In addition to readings and discussions, students will work through a series of exercises that visualize a chosen urban condition at a series of scales and correlated perspectives. These exercises break down the process of image conception and execution over several weeks. Each scale builds on top of the previous and forms a composite image of a particular city when assembled. The final assignment will be curating the work produced to form a visual atlas through a whole class exhibition.
Students should take this course because they will learn how to maximize the potency of the images that they create. They will learn to integrate image crafting into the design process. They will learn the fundamentals and basis for harnessing the power of the image to supplement their intellectual and design ambitions. Students will create impactful visual content structured by meaning, beauty, and emotion. They will develop an eye for strong images and understand how individual details such as composition, tone, texture, and light strengthen the larger picture. A student who successfully engages with the course content will emerge with the conceptual and technical capacity to create compelling images that challenge the conventions of representation while also speaking to a broad audience.
The course is for designers of all types. While we will use the term 'urban' to connote the ecological complexity of our contextual focus, designers from various disciplines are encouraged to bring their expertise to the group. Rendering techniques, both in engine and post-production, will be covered extensively and expertise is either is not a prerequisite. However, a solid foundation in 3D modeling with Rhino is expected, as is a curiosity and determination to test and acquire new skills and perspectives.
New Towns and Affordable Housing Development in Africa
This course is a research seminar delving into new town development and affordable housing production in Africa. The course provides an overview of new town development around the world with a focus on emerging markets and Africa in particular. A concurrent theme will be case studies of production housing and self-built housing delivered to the lower end of the price spectrum. This course is a research seminar that will meet once a week. Students will engage in research throughout the term on topics of their own choosing. The topics may range from new town investigations in different African countries to production housing techniques, social and economic housing issues or self-built housing that is currently the dominant method of delivery for the great majority of the population. While particular attention will be given to Tanzania and Kenya as well as Nigeria and South Africa, students may select any country in Africa for their research focus. Topics including construction techniques, new technologies, house and apartment design, organization of construction and development firms, financing alternatives, regulation, political hurdles, citizen engagement are all encouraged. While the course will not include any in-person site visits, there will be conversations and interviews with many key players in Africa including government ministers, scholars, developers, investors, contractors, and others who are active in various countries. Students will submit a final report on their research and will present their conclusions at the end of the term to a jury and their peers.
Students taking studios at 2:00 will be accommodated outside of regular class time.
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.
This course will meet online for the first class on Monday, January 23rd. Please check the Canvas site for the Zoom link.
Land Loss, Reclamation, and Stewardship in Contemporary Native America
This course will explore critical dimensions in American Indian land issues: historical land loss, contemporary tribal governmental efforts at land reclamation, stewardship, and co-management. We will begin by tracking the history of land dispossession from colonial settlement to the present day. We will then move on to explore the reality of contemporary tribal governance and how that critical function turns on jurisdiction over traditional lands. Are these lands owned outright? Are they held in trust by the US government for the benefit of the tribal nations? Are they traditional territories technically outside the control of the tribes, but with day-to-day stewardship and oversight provided by tribes? Finally, we will conclude the course with a speculative exercise that invites students to imagine an alternative future in which a specific factor in history played out differently.
This course is cross listed with Harvard Kennedy School as SUP 625.
Modern Housing and Urban Districts: Concepts, Cases, and Comparisons
This seminar 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 will be drawn from different contexts, 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 begins with discussions of three broad topics germane to the issue and design of contemporary housing, including 1) ideas of community and what constitutes a neighborhood across historical contexts and cultural milieu, 2) territories, types, interiors, and other landscapes dealing with the constraints and dimensions of the external context and internal life, and 3) different and constantly evolving proxies of the good life used to orient and measure the design process and outcome.
These broad topical discussions will be followed by case studies, categorized by characteristics of the buildings or the external context they engage. In each category, contemporary examples will provide the primary focus, while precedents in and adjacent to architecture will be introduced to flesh out historical circumstances and paths of development. These categories will include: 1) urban block shapers, 2) tall towers, 3) big buildings, 4) housing and landscapes, 5) infrastructural engagements, and 6) infill and puntal interventions. We will also be joined by three guest speakers, each re-thinking how measures of good design are defined and measured.
In Spring 2023, the course will begin with the three introductory lectures, followed by six classes each focused on a specific housing category, and concluding with three guest speakers. Each class will consist of 1) a lecture, 2) student presentations, and 3) a discussion. Beyond weekly participation, contribution to in-class discussions, and preparations for Q&A sessions with guest speakers, the main deliverable of the course is to propose an original metric/measure/index of good housing/neighborhood, anchored to references, framed in terms of their usefulness, and populated with cases. Students will make an interim presentation between weeks 4-9, and a final presentation between weeks 10-12.
Native Americans in the 21st Century: Nation Building II (at HKS)
This community based research course focuses on some of the major issues Native American Indian tribes and nations face in the 21st century. It provides in-depth, hands-on exposure to native development issues, including: sovereignty, economic development, constitutional reform, leadership, health and social welfare, tribal finances, land and water rights, culture and language, religious freedom, and education. In particular, the course emphasizes problem definition, client relationships, and designing and completing a research project for a tribe, tribal department, or those active in Indian Country. The course is devoted primarily to preparation and presentation of a comprehensive research paper based on work with a tribal community. In addition to faculty presentations on topics such as field research methods and problem definition, students will make presentations on their work in progress and ultimate findings.
This course is offered by the Havard Kennedy School as DEV 502, and is also jointly listed with Graduate School of Education as A-102, and the Faculty of Arts and Science as EMR-121., and the Graduate School of Design as SES 5427. For students interested in additional courses on Native America please also see HKS DEV-501M “Native Americans in the 21st Century: Nation Building I” (Joseph Kalt and Angela Riley) and HKS SUP 625/GSD SES 5439 “Land Loss, Reclamation, and Stewardship in Contemporary Native America” (Eric Henson, Philip Deloria, Daniel D’Oca).
This course is held at HKS in Wexler 330. See the HKS website for information on shopping period dates.
Urban Design for Planners
Urban design is a complex and interdisciplinary process that indelibly shapes the economic, social, and physical character of places and communities, large and small.
This seminar course introduces planners and others interested in urban development and cities to the principles and processes of urban design. It considers the critical role of design in creating beautiful, just, and resilient places and its lasting impact on people and communities.
The course explores the intersections and interplay between design and the built and natural environment, planning, public policy, politics, real estate development, and society. It considers the actors involved—including the public, private, and nonprofit entities—and their respective roles. It examines the roles of history, culture, and leadership in shaping the public realm and the benefits of public engagement and dialogue to advance and implement ambitious civic visions and projects with social impact.
The course provides an understanding of the history and evolution of urban design and the modes and methods of practice through readings, presentations, case studies, conversations with practitioners, and class discussions. Students will acquire knowledge, including access to resources and tools, and skills to successfully navigate, facilitate, and participate in urban design processes and projects.
Assessment:
Evaluation will be based on class participation; a semester-long reflection on a specific place integrating responses to readings, presentations, and panel discussions; and a final case study assignment.
Learning Goals:
• Appreciate and describe the role of design in the urban environment and its critical connections to equity, access, health, and environmental sustainability.
• Understand and discuss the history, evolution, and diversity of urban design and urban design practices processes and their impacts on communities and cities.
• Identify and describe the variety of actors involved in urban design (people, organizations, sectors), their influence, and the intersections and interplay between them.
• Develop and utilize an inventory of urban design resources and tools to educate and engage communities, clients, and constituents and support practice.
• Refine and apply observation, analysis, communication, and critical thinking skills and strategies to evaluate and respond to urban design and development scenarios and proposals.
Climate Justice
Recent discourse around climate change—including debates about the Anthropocene, Green New Deal legislation, the dire warnings of the IPCC, to name a few—increasingly make evident that climate change is much more than a technological problem of carbon mitigation. Taking recent geological and climatic changes as symptoms of deeper structural challenges, this class will address climate change as fundamentally a problem of social and environmental injustice. The class will argue for the necessity of studying theories of justice, inequality, and structural violence along with climate science, policy, and international diplomacy. In our search for climate justice, the class will trace various forms of climate activism within the history of environmental movements, explore non-Western forms of knowledge as key critiques and logics of action, and evaluate concrete suggestions for radical reform. We will discuss how climate justice as a framework of concern is both universal and specific, and we will critically engage ideas of justice at different scales, from the local to the global, with careful attention to context. We will ultimately ask what new kinds of practices, knowledges, and collaborations are necessary to build more just and responsible relationships between people and the nonhuman world, and with each other.