At Home and Abroad: Housing in Comparative Perspective

At Home and Abroad examines the diverse approaches to housing across cultural, political, and economic contexts. In a selection of cities across the globe, students will learn from different housing systems, and understand how each one responds to local problems–and sometimes, creates new ones. We will invert the usual lists of best practices, prioritizing traveling policies that move from South to North, and taking lessons from housing actors beyond the usual suspects.  

A unique feature of this course is the opportunity to work in tandem with the New York-based organization the Urban Design Forum. Students will be paired with groups of Forum fellows as they set out to analyze international housing models and extract valuable lessons for addressing New York City’s ongoing housing crisis. What makes New York a good laboratory for this inquiry? The scale of its housing crisis, paired with the relentless attempts at solving it. This provides students an extraordinary chance to apply classroom knowledge to real-world challenges, and connect in real time with practitioners taking those challenges on.  
 
In class, we will divide our time between discussion and action. In addition to our work with the Urban Design Forum, each week, we will debate essential readings in comparative housing studies. We will cover models in affordability, sustainability, governance, and financing. Students will engage with a variety of case studies, policy transfer stories, and theoretical frameworks. They will complete the course with an understanding of how housing solutions are influenced by local, national, and transnational conditions–and how, in turn, they shape the fate of cities. Potential case studies will include housing cooperatives in Uruguay and India, zoning reformers in New Zealand, Japanese aging-in-place strategies, Lebanon’s financialization of urban development, France’s social housing projects, and so on (see syllabus). We will also incorporate examples you choose in each of our sessions. 
 
This class explicitly seeks to include students from across the school’s programs. It is ideal for those interested in urban planning and design, public policy, sociology, environmental planning, and international studies. The course will be a mix of lectures, case discussions, exercises, and student presentations.

By the end of the course a student will be able to:  
1. Develop a comprehensive understanding of global housing systems 
2. Critically analyze and compare housing policies and practices across different regions 
3. Evaluate the role of housing in promoting or hindering social equity, better health outcomes, and environmental justice 
4. Synthesize cross-cultural perspectives to address housing challenges 
5. Collaborate with industry leaders as they engage directly with ongoing efforts to transform New York City’s housing landscape. 
6. Debate whether we can produce a clearly identifiable set of “best practices” given the global diversity of contexts, institutional arrangements, and intractable challenges cities are faced with, which themselves are constantly changing. 
 

Spatial Design Strategies for Climate- and Conflict-Induced Migration

Climate change presents an urgent global challenge with far-reaching implications for human societies and all other species inhabiting the planet. Over the next few decades, extreme climate zones and uninhabitable areas are projected to expand, driven by factors such as water stress, food insecurity, extreme heat, sea level rise, and weather-related disasters such as storms and wildfires. These challenges are already driving instability and increasing displacement, forcing individuals and communities to leave behind the spaces and cultures they have inhabited for generations.

As of 2024, an estimated 120 million people are displaced (UNHCR), with projections suggesting this number may rise significantly, disproportionally impacting individuals and communities historically the least responsible for the climate crisis.

This project-based seminar will examine migration induced by climate and conflict, which often intersect, in one of the most volatile hotspots in the world, the Sahel. The Sahel region has been grappling with the root causes and the multidimensional consequences of climate change for a long time; colonization, extensive resource extraction, conflict, and militarization. In the region, new trends in migration are observed, and local, national, and international policies and protocols for humanitarian contingency planning are currently being developed in response.

In the Sahel, traditional lifestyles such as nomadic pastoralism and transhumance have thrived for millennia in extreme weather conditions, offering valuable lessons in adaptability and perseverance in times of crisis and resource scarcity. 

In the seminar, the class will engage with diverse stakeholders and viewpoints from theory and practice. We will have conversations with representatives of United Nations agencies, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which possess real-time data and field experience. Drawing on their data sets and engaging in dialogue with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community representatives, we will develop a case study focused on climate migration in the Sahel, with particular attention to the situation in Mauritania, where local and international organizations are working together to support the country’s open-door policy and its efforts to host refugees from the region (and keep them from reaching Europe).

Sessions will include meetings with diverse stakeholders, interaction with UN agencies, non-governmental organizations and representative of local communities, and in-class workshops for project development that include spatial analyses of migration trends and scenario exercises. To attend the class, students are required to have knowledge of spatial design (architecture, urban and landscape architecture) along with basic mapping skills.

Urban Governance and the Politics of Planning in the Global South

This course starts from the premise that urban politics and governance arrangements shape the character, form, and function of cities as well as the planning strategies used to make them more just, equitable, and sustainable.  Using a focus on cities in the developing world, the course examines an array of governance structures (centralized versus decentralized institutions; local versus national states; participatory budgeting, etc.) and political conditions (democracy versus authoritarianism; neoliberal versus populist versus leftist party politics; social movements) that are relatively common to cities of the global south.

The course is structured around a comparative analysis of theories and cases that give us the basis for documenting the ways that politics affect urban policy and the built environment of the city more generally. The course’s critical approach to case studies and policy prescriptions will also prepare students to formulate relevant planning strategies in the future. Among a range of policy domains, special attention is paid to transportation, housing, mega-project development, land policy, and environmental sutainability, with most examples drawn from Latin America, South and East Asia, and Africa.

Do No Harm: Dilemmas in Planning for Health

Planners have long imagined themselves as physicians attending to the good health of cities and the communities living in them. Do No Harm unpacks the complex connections between environmental health, public health, and city planning. The course title, a nod to both the Hippocratic Oath and the creed of social reformer Florence Nightingale, represents a challenge to students preparing to manage the discrete, conflicting interests of that most complex of organisms–the metropolis. 

This class uses housing as a starting point for a sectional slice of inquiry that spans from the underground to the air that surrounds us. We will discuss how the design, policy, geography, ownership model, and maintenance of housing influence various public and environmental health metrics, and what levers are available to planners to influence those outcomes. We will explore and evaluate tools of assessment and intervention and identify points of leverage. Within this framework, students are expected to bring their own interests, disciplines, and experience to bear on a semester where our focus will range from affordable and simple tools at the housing-health nexus (smoke detectors, mosquito nets) to more complicated questions of ethics, objectives, and priorities. 

Together we’ll consider the nexus between health and planning as an ongoing process of experimentation, monitoring, learning, and adaptation, with the aim of constantly improving the conditions that promote health for all populations, but with a particular focus on improvements that alleviate the inequities currently experienced by segregated and disinvested communities around the world.

The class will be divided into two streams–input and action. In the input part of the class students will study famous and infamous stories about how our decisions can harm or heal communities, such as Haussmannian hygienist efforts in France, the rise of air-conditioning in Global South cities, or slum clearance in the United States. In the action component groups of students will develop an approach to addressing a real problem in a real place, using housing as a lever for better health. These may be speculative or tailored for a client who works at this nexus between planning and health (the Parisian Roofscapes). These outputs may take the form of written reports, graphic visualizations, or creative endeavors which students will refine and pitch at midterm and final presentations.  

We’ll ask: What are the key health issues that should concern those in planning and related fields? Can physical design and planning alone improve health? In a world of finite resources, how do we weigh competing priorities and evaluate the costs and benefits of our interventions? Do we need values systems to guide or restrain technocratic evidence-based approaches? Where are the limits of our responsibility for health outcomes in our jurisdictions? 

This course will equip you with the understanding, vocabulary, and tools you need to make health a part of your future practice, whether you become a housing advocate, a land use planner, a developer, an urban designer, a transportation planner, or some other role entirely. For those who come from the world of public health and environmental policy, you will gain new insight into the powers and politics that enable and constrain planners, architects, and other practitioners in the city.

The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 3rd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. As this course meets on Tuesday, the first meeting of this course will be on Tuesday, September 10th. It will meet regularly thereafter. 

Planning for Pedestrians and Cyclists

Meeting the ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets that will be required to reduce, prevent, or delay catastrophic changes to the global climate will require a dramatic shift from motorized to active modes of transportation for urban travel. The purpose of this course is to prepare students to plan transportation infrastructure for a sustainable future by creating streets that are safe and comfortable for pedestrians and cyclists. Students will learn to evaluate the adequacy of streets to meet the needs of pedestrians and cyclists at the level of individual street segments and as connected networks. They will also learn to identify locations where infrastructure improvements are likely to have the greatest impact and to create conceptual designs for potential improvements. Students will develop and demonstrate these skills through the completion of a real project for a client in the greater Boston area.

Community-Informed Urban Design

In Community-Informed Urban Design, we will explore the role of urban design, architecture, and placemaking in shaping social conditions within the built environment. We will critically examine how design decisions have disproportionately impacted those most vulnerable, exacerbating existing disparities based on race, ethnicity, class, gender, religion, and age. Students must define their social responsibility and will directly confront social frameworks to explore avenues for reparative urban design.

Throughout the course, we will review historical design injustices and unveil the benefit of healing, trauma-informed, and community-driven alternatives. Our focus will center on two primary vulnerable populations: system-impacted communities and the unhoused. Marginalized and criminalized by society, these communities have been further failed by designers who concretize these value judgements spatially. To challenge implicit bias that compounds across the built environment, students will utilize numerous qualitative and quantitative research methods, alongside design-thinking to produce empathetic, data-driven solutions.
 
We will learn and deploy various community engagement practices, such as interviews, surveys, focus groups, intercepts, and online engagement tools. In light of the course’s sensitive topics, there will be special attention to cultural competency and best practices specific to vulnerable populations. Students will be evaluated on projects that incorporate design, policy, and financing that advocate for these communities, for justice, and that aim to repair past harms and improve outcomes well into the future.
 
Interdisciplinarity is strongly encouraged. Students across the GSD and from other areas of interest are welcome to enroll.

Real Estate Private Equity and Capital Markets [Module 2]

Through lectures, case studies, and expert panel discussions, this module will explore the evolution of institutional real estate capital markets with a particular focus on market activity over the past seven years. Capital markets embody a complex ecosystem of public and private equity and debt funding for real estate companies, property acquisitions, transformations, and new developments. The business model and investment objectives of capital purveyors depend on a variety of factors. Case studies will be used to highlight key real estate investment concepts such as identifying opportunities, public/private valuations, distressed investing, risk management, asymmetric investments, and alignment of interests.  Industry experts will discuss the current macro environment, key market concerns, capital availability, cost of capital, acquisition and development economics, and opportunistic and thematic investment strategies. By the end of the module, students will have gained a functional framework and understanding of how real estate private equity and capital markets work under current and future circumstances.

MRE students who want to take this course should enter the Limited Enrollment Course Lottery and will be automatically enrolled.

Foundations of Distressed Debt and Turnarounds: Tactics of Law, Finance and Negotiation [Module 1]

Virtually every career will encounter unanticipated outcomes. 

This half-semester course presents a curriculum of commercial real estate restructurings and distressed debt that involve risk analysis, legal considerations, and negotiation from the considered perspectives of owners, investors, lenders, tenants, employees, employees, policymakers, and society. The module utilizes real-world case studies that require a synthesis of structuring, valuation, and financial analysis.       

The course is designed for graduate-level students with a variety of backgrounds who demonstrate a curiosity in learning how to create value from otherwise fractured situations.  
 

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 credit trades and new approaches to old systems 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. Their skills provide them the insights necessary to make such markets work. Students will investigate, in small teams, whether a developing credit market based on phosphorus trading would also help up to four cities in Massachusetts meet their regulatory obligations to control Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) and Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems (MS4s). Intended to incentivize the restoration of natural systems, the market would also lead to enhanced flood control, resilience to drought, and restored habitat. Students will also work with city officials, producing a report on their findings and recommendations. Using Blue Cities/Stratifyx, a developing market platform, they will assess the damage existing infrastructure has caused while examining the benefits and potential for restorative change.

Policy Analysis: A Tool for Evidence-Based Decision Making

Policy analysis is problem solving.  It involves making systematic comparisons across a set of alternatives to address a particular policy or planning problem, usually in the face of time and resource constraints.  Typically, policy analysis is done to provide advice to a client, organization, or another decision-maker in the face of a public problem or crisis.  It involves rapid response, quickly orienting yourself to new and changing topics that often are complex and controversial.  How to develop doable solutions that target the core problem at hand? How to weigh the many competing trade-offs among diverse stakeholders?  How to balance innovation with pragmatism?  In this class we will develop strategies to address these, and other, challenges. 

While the course will emphasize the development of a stage-based analytical approach, we will also discuss alternative models of policy analysis and consider critical perspectives from political science, behavioral science and design fields.

Based largely on case discussions, the class will explore the choices facing decision makers in the public and nonprofit sectors in the US and abroad with regard to a wide range of issues, including public health, environmental protection, urban development, transportation and infrastructure.  We will also have a unit on cost benefit analysis and how to incorporate it into this analytical toolbox.  We will approach CBA from a critical perspective and consider its limitations in the face of scarce information and equity concerns. 

This is a methods course: we will use a variety of cases to practice and become nimble in the logic and techniques behind policy analysis, rather than becoming an expert in any one subject area.  Students will develop their own analyses and learn how to communicate them in written memos, oral argument, and visual presentations. The course will culminate in a team project in which students conduct a simulated policy analysis exercise on a current issue.

 

Up to four seats will be held for MDes students.