Community Development: History, Theory, and Imaginative Practice

Community development is a heterogeneous and contested field of planning thought and practice. The profession has generally prioritized people and places that are disproportionately burdened by capitalist urbanization and development. In the US, the dominant focus has been on personal or group development and widening access to opportunities, with a growing reliance on market incentives to deliver housing options and spur economic development. Yet for many communities at the margins, development has rather connoted practices of freedom— freedom from oppression and deprivation; freedom to enjoy one’s time, make choices, and experience life as abundance and possibility. Thus conceived, community development is less a question of remedial policy than acts of resistance, claiming rights and power, and transforming economic, political, social, and spatial structures and processes to become more inclusive, vibrant, and sustainable. 
 
This course offers an interdisciplinary, critical, reflective, and experimental approach to community development that proceeds in three key parts. The first, “revisiting,” examines the history of community development in the US, including evolving patterns, drivers, and explanations of urban inequality and poverty and corresponding urban policy and planning responses. We also revisit alternative histories of community development, drawing on the intellectual and movement traditions of Black liberation and radical feminist struggles that have sought to change race relations in America in connection with global assaults on capitalism, empire, and patriarchy. We additionally study indigenous community development theory and practice. The second part, “unraveling,” applies these anti-racist, liberatory, and reparative frameworks to critically analyze community development concepts and strategies, interrogating dominant approaches that uphold race, class, and gender-based supremacies. Here we pay close attention to the dilemma of race that has continued to define capitalism, politics, and spatial production in America as well as divided working class and progressive movements, including those defining the field of community development. 
 
The final part, “praxis,” comprises a speaker series and discussion sessions focused on applied practices and cases— intended to help students develop their own community development agendas and skills within a peer-learning community. Notwithstanding significant advancements in affordable housing development, social service delivery, and placemaking— the traditional mainstay of community development— the course focuses on community development approaches that transcend such neighborhood-scale programming to instead leverage public infrastructure investments and procurement capacities of anchor institutions and apply economic democracy principles to strengthen collective ownership and governance capacity over productive infrastructures and resources. Guest speakers will also include creative community developers incorporating art, culture, and restorative justice practices.
 
Course evaluations will be based on two assignments (CD atlas entry and final project) and class participation. It has no prerequisites and is open to graduate students across different disciplines.

 

Environment, Economics, and Enterprise

This course blends two shades of green: sustainability and money.  It focuses on the intersection between environmental and social opportunities in the built environment and the economic impact they have on the commercial enterprise ecosystem. It is taught through interdisciplinary exercises and discussion involving architectural design, environmental technology, simple energy modelling, urban economics and commercial real estate practices. How can one optimize the benefits of environmental or social sustainability while generating a higher return on investment in buildings, infrastructure or other forms of real estate? Where are the opportunities for real estate initiatives that are highly functional, healthy, aesthetically pleasing and financially rewarding?  The challenge to designers, developers, entrepreneurs, environmental consultants, policy-makers and other professionals lies in finding and communicating these synergies. This cross-disciplinary course will give students an approach to problem solving to help them contribute to thoughtful, high-impact decisions about design, construction, and enterprise formation that are environmentally, socially, and economically impactful to the broader urban environment. The course will cover various elements including:

1. Architectural design for sustainability and introduction to simple energy modeling,
2. Other aspects of environmental sustainability including health and welfare of tenants, social equities, neighborhood cultural optimization, regional economic vibrancy incorporating clean, healthy, and affordable living,
3. Financial and social quantification of economic impact and risks, 
4. Capitalization of sustainable projects including public and private equity, public and private debt, and social sponsors,
5. Financial evaluation and commercial pro forma analysis necessary to attract private capital,
6. Financial and pro forma analysis for public and nonprofit stakeholders and sponsors,
7. Development of an integrated business plan around sustainable projects. 

At the end of the course students will be able to:

a. identify sustainability opportunities for projects or potentially new businesses.  Identify sustainable/economic win-win solutions
b. develop, with rigor, the advanced sustainable design programs to enhance performance of a particular project or enterprise. 
c. model the environmental and economic impact of each proposed initiative independently as well as the cumulative initiatives taken together on a “systems basis”
d. translate enhanced design and idea conception into a project's or business’s  financial pro forma,  and communicate the financial impact clearly to market makers
e. complete accurate cost benefit economic analysis, with realistic assumptions on ability to finance and ability (if any) to obtain premium value on exit
f. analyze market demand for projects or appropriate businesses with and without enhanced sustainable design
g. explain their ideas in the language of decision-makers, from community groups to financial investors

 

Class Structure: Please visit my.Harvard to see the full note on the class format. 

Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 01/19-01/21. To acc

Urbanization and Development

This course examines the relationship between urbanization and development, paying close attention to the ways that public and private sector priorities, legal frameworks, land use protocols, and infrastructure policies determine the growth and structure of cities in the late industrializing world. In addition to highlighting the inter-relationships between globalization and national economic priorities on one hand and urbanization processes on the other, as well as the connections between cities and their hinterlands, we pay special attention to the social and economic exigencies of urban residents in the face of these relationships and processes. We are interested in the ways that residents accommodate, modify, or reject the priorities, projects, and policies imposed by planners, designers, builders, real estate developers, and multilateral development agencies, among other key actors with targeted urban development agendas. Because ownership and regulation of land is key to these processes, we pay special attention to collective versus individual property rights, informality, and the ways that struggles to own versus occupy urban territory will impact urbanization processes. Among other key issues we examine are struggles over housing and displacement as well as the role of transportation, water, and other critical infrastructure in producing urban built form. 

The course begins by critically interrogating the concepts of “development” and “urbanization,” whether they speak to normative aspirations and not merely economic prosperity, and how they align with assumptions of “modernity.” We then examine the theoretical and empirical relationships between urbanization and development, analyzed through a focus on the collision between citizens, markets, and states and their territorial orbits. We then turn to key determinants of inter- and intra- urbanization patterns, ranging from migration to industrialization to land speculation,  moving beyond universal claims about the relationship between urbanization and development by engaging historically and contextually specific examples. Readings draw primarily from Latin America, South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East, although on occasion we use historical evidence from Europe and the United States  as a contrast. 

Course Audience and Format:
The course is geared towards graduate students from across the planning, design, social science disciplines who are interested in urbanization and development. It has no prerequisites. Participation in discussion is expected among all students, as is regular class attendance. Each student will select two class sessions over the course of the semester in which s/he will serve as raconteur, responsible for making critical commentary and guiding discussion on that session’s readings. Early in the semester all students are expected to pick one city — anywhere in the world — that will serve as their principal subject of study and analysis throughout the semester.  Assignments include short reading responses throughout the semester, a midterm essay, and a final paper. 

The weekly two hours meetings scheduled for this course require attendance. In addition to the synchronous meeting times, there will be a range of other asynchronous events of different styles (lectures, films, assignments to be done in groups) for each class.

Grading and Assignments:
Class participation and leading discussion 15%
Reading responses 25%
Mid-term paper 20%
Final paper 40%

 

Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 01/19-01/21. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website. If you need assistance, please contact Estefanía Ibáñez. 

A limited number of seats are held for PhD students. Interested PhD students should contact the instructor as well as submit a petition to cross-register.

U. S. Housing Markets, Problems, and Policies

This course will examine the operation of U.S. housing markets, the principal housing problems facing the nation, and the policy approaches available to address these problems within the existing political, regulatory and market context.  The course is structured around four central housing problems that are the focus of US housing policy:  the inability of a large share of renters to obtain housing that meets generally accepted affordability standards; the challenges facing low-income and minority households in attaining homeownership; the high degree of residential segregation by race/ethnicity and income and associated differential access to public and private resources that results; and how housing policy can support broader efforts at community development.  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 address 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 assess the relative merits of alternative approaches.  Class sessions will be a mixture of lecture and class discussions focusing on the assigned readings.  Students will be expected to come to class prepared to be fully engaged participants in these discussions. Over the course of the semester, students will be required to prepare periodic reviews of assigned readings shared on Canvas, submit a 5-page paper making the case for a specific policy proposal, and complete a take home final exam.  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.

Course structure: The class will meet synchronously on Tuesdays and Thursdays  from 1-2 pm ET. A total of one hour of asynchronous class time will be assigned each week generally consisting of short pre-recorded lectures or other video material

Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 01/19-01/21. Please visit the Live Course Presentations Website. If you need assistance, please contact Estefanía Ibáñez. 

Housing and Urbanization in Global Cities

Housing and Urbanization in Global Cities examines housing policy and planning in urban societies around the world and especially in the Global South.  Through slide presentations, discussions, guest lectures, texts, and exercises, we examine the dynamic growth of cities; the ideological impulses to combat slum conditions and provide mass housing; the resulting anti-slum and housing programs; the means of financing such programs; and the effects of design and planning on people and their communities.

The first part of the course is devoted to the history and theory of housing and urbanization. We examine the effects of intense urban growth in Europe, especially the emergence of the twin problems of slums and housing; the export of Western housing and anti-slum policies to the developing world; the furious debate over the nature of informal settlements in the Global South; and the fundamental concepts of land use and housing policy. 

In the second part of the course, we take up the practical application of housing policies in different national environments around the globe.  Using the cases of Bogotá, Mumbai, Johannesburg, and Beijing, we study the ways private developers, planners, designers, non-government organization officers, and government officials work within local systems of land use, law, and finance to respond to informal settlements and produce homes for people. Working in teams, students evaluate specific housing programs in Bogotá, Mumbai, and Johannesburg, and propose a planning strategy to improve particular sites in the outer section of Beijing. 

This course helps prepare students for international planning and design studios, housing studios, and courses on housing or social policy in general.  It will appeal to graduate school designers, planners, and public policy students interested in social engagement and the diverse methods of producing low-income housing in global cities. There are no prerequisites.

Course structure: The format of classes will vary. Most classes will be synchronous, and all students will attend on Zoom for the full hour-and-a-half. Usually these classes will be comprised of lectures during the first 50 minutes or so, to be followed by a short break and then class discussion for about 30 minutes. Some classes may start later and last 30-45 minutes. All lectures will be recorded and available to students living in time zones that make it difficult to attend synchronous classes.

Jointly Offered Course: HKS SUP-662

Note: Shopping Day Schedule for SES-5337/SUP-662 at HKS: Thursday, January 23rd from 2:45-4:00 pm in R304.

Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 01/19-01/21. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website. If you need assistance, please contact Estefanía Ibáñez.&nbs

Theories for Practice in Conflict, Crisis, and Recovery

Course topics and objectives:
How do we understand the relationship between crisis, recovery and the built environment at the beginning of the 21st century? Conflicts and disasters (both “natural” and human-made) are both symptoms and evidence of asymmetrical urban, territorial, and social development. For this reason, any ethically defensible response to a catastrophic event should go beyond “mere” reconstruction and imagine new, more resilient, and more equitable forms of urbanization. This research seminar will therefore examine situations of ‘post-disaster recovery’, as an opportunity to rethink, conceptually redefine, and proactively reconstruct or reconfigure new forms of urbanization.

Historically, this class has explored the social construction of crisis, disasters and emergencies through a critical interpretive lens that situates contemporary discourses on disaster response within theories of crisis and the ‘natural’, and with special attention on modernization, globalization, and urbanization. In so doing, we identify the conditions under which certain crises or related challenges are considered normal or routine, as opposed to exceptional. This spring we will modify the class to more purposefully examine contemporary developments that have captured the global imagination, most particularly the emergence of social movements that define themselves as pushing back against ongoing crisis and disaster related to power structures and their disastrous impacts on peoples, territories, and longer-term human sustainability. Specifically, we pay special attention to social movements and other forms of mobilization emerging in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and calls to defund the police; the Covid-19 pandemic; and the intensified destruction of precarious ecologies through resource extraction, urbanization, and statist development projects intended to supplant global political and economic power (i.e. fracking, deforestation, mining, petroleum extraction , and so on).  We move beyond the abstract to ground our inquiry in the physical world and with close attention to the political. In addition to examining the variety of actors involved in these social movements, we will pay special attention to the spatial strategies and tactics they deploy, the languages of individual versus collective rights and responsibilities they may reference, and the degrees to which these movements create social and political alliances at a variety of scales – including with NGOs, citizens, professional planners, political parties, and governing institutions including those operating internationally – that lay the pathway for constructive change. 

Course format and methods of evaluation:
This course is a reading, writing, and research seminar, with short essays or commentaries due throughout. However, final deliverables can be either an extended paper/essay or a project. Either way, the class requires sustained participation throughout the semester. Readings span multiple disciplines in the social sciences: urban studies, geography, sociology, political philosophy, and science and technology studies (STS). Some assignments will be collective, others individual. Students will use a variety of methodologies such as analytical mapping and design techniques as well as archival, survey, planning, ecological, engineering, and critical conservation practices to offer projective ideas and grounded proposals that put humanism, justice, and values of racial, gender, social, and class equity at the center of any  vision for sustainable futures. 

Course structure: The weekly two hours meetings scheduled for this course require attendance. In addition to the synchronous meeting times, there will be a range of other asynchronous events of different styles (lectures, films, assignments to be done in groups) for each class. 

Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 01/19-01/21. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website. If you need assistance, please contact Estefanía Ibáñez. 

Building and Leading Real Estate Enterprises and Entrepreneurship

This course focuses on how you conceive, build and lead successful real estate companies. By virtue of the industry in which they compete, real estate companies are almost always founded and developed by entrepreneurs. A few grow to become category killers; others are able to compete in a crowded and competitive landscape. Many, however, are eventually closed down; sometimes due to changing market forces, sometimes due to lack of good corporate strategy or execution, and sometimes due to the founder neglecting to institutionalize a lasting organization to succeed him or her.

Taught through a combination of lectures, cases and analytical problems, this course examines (primarily through the lens of real estate investment and development companies), the critical ingredients required to grow and lead long-term competitive enterprises. The course will begin with an examination of how to optimize the performance of real properties and then migrate to the design and development of successful companies that own or service properties.

At the end of this course, students should gain a deeper appreciation of how owners think and act when they oversee their companies. They will specifically be introduced to how to develop a robust strategy, capital plan, corporate culture and execution capability that are part of every great real estate company. Students taking this course should also be able to construct the elements of a simple business plan for a startup. Students are also encouraged to think about how they may launch their own real estate enterprise during the course, and to make active use of other Harvard resources, including Harvard clubs and facilities like the I-lab, as they think through their entrepreneurial opportunities.

Paired Course: Although not mandatory, this course is meant to be taken in conjunction with GSD 5275,  which meets the first half of the semester; it is also 2 credits and meets at the same time as 5276. GSD 5276 will build on many of the questions and concepts that 5275 postulates.

Advanced Real Estate Finance

This course builds on GSD 5204 and comparable introductory real estate courses offered by other schools at Harvard. This year’s course covers five main topics: (1) Advanced Financial Analysis and Deal Structuring for Acquisitions (including waterfalls), (2) Advanced Financial Analysis and Structuring for Land and Development Projects, (3) Debt Financing and Debt Investments, (4) Real Estate Market Cycles and Portfolio Structuring, (5) Management and recovery of Assets in a Distressed Environment

The objective of the course is to give students in-depth financial analytical skills for project acquisitions and development, real estate financing, and portfolio management. Using case studies and lectures, the course focuses on advanced real estate topics for all major real estate product-types including apartments, office, retail, industrial, single-family, and land development. A major emphasis in the class is to build students’ financial modeling skills and their knowledge of advanced industry practices. Many cases will require students to apply a full range of acquisition, development, investment, disposition, financing, and management decisions at the property level. Key decision-making for all phases of the development process including site selection, design, financing, construction, leasing, operations, and sales are stressed throughout the first half of the course. Other strategic requirements for completing successful projects such as acquisition due diligence, debt and equity structuring, market cycle timing, and asset recovery in a distressed environment are covered during the other half.

Paired Course: Although not mandatory, this course is meant to be taken in conjunction with GSD 5276, which takes place in the second half of the semester; it is also 2 credits and meets at the same time as 5275. GSD 5276 will build on many of the questions and concepts that 5275 postulates.

Public and Private Development

Cities are developed by a complex blend of public and private actors and actions. This course employs a combination of lectures, discussions, readings, case studies, and individual and group exercises to help students understand, evaluate, and implement public and private development. The course commences with instruction about core analytic methods, emphasizing real estate financial analysis while also addressing modified cost-benefit, economic impact, and fiscal impact analyses. Early classes also explore legal, institutional, administrative, political, and ethical contextual frameworks. Together, the analytic methods and contextual frameworks allow for elaboration of decision rules about thoughtful balances in the deployment of public and private resources. The remainder of the course covers specific implementation tools including, among others, public subsidies, public land disposition through sale or lease, public land acquisition through eminent domain, value capture mechanisms, community benefits agreements, and business improvement districts. The goal of the course is to foster reflective practitioners, whether planners, designers, developers, public policymakers, or advocates, who think critically and pragmatically as they navigate the trade-offs inherent in public-private city building. Note that most of the implementation tools and examples explored in the course are drawn from United States practice, but international tools and examples are introduced from time to time to demonstrate the range of variation. 

Jointly Offered Course: HKS SUP-668

This course is limited enrollment. MDes REBE students who select the course first in the limited enrollment course lottery will receive priority in the lottery.

Ecosystem restoration

Given the current speed of habitat and species loss caused by human development, the restoration of degraded ecosystem is one of the greatest challenges humankind is facing. For this reason, the United Nations declared the current decade (2021-2030) as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. This global effort will need from experts on ecosystem science, management and design to have a deep understanding of how ecosystems recover from human disturbance and how we can use this knowledge to increase the currently limited performance of restoration practice. This course is particularly suited for students with interests in nature conservation, the natural component of landscape architecture, or ecosystem management in a broad sense. This course is cross-listed with the Department of Organismal and Evolutionary Biology, which will allow students from both disciplines to exchange their knowledge in a multidirectional learning environment where we all will address real world restoration cases. In this year’s edition, we will focus on the restoration of New England’s ecosystems. We will work in parallel to an ongoing research project to understand the recovery of New England’s ecosystem over the last 300 years since the abandonment of most of the farms created by the original settlers. Through research, we will learn how forests and other ecosystems have changed during this time to apply that knowledge to a real restoration project that students will develop. We will have key inputs from guest lectures coming from restoration companies with many years of experience restoring ecosystems worldwide. They will help us find targeted tools to support and design ecosystems both in urban and natural environments in the New England context. We will increase our understanding of what nature is for humans and the Earth system and will increase our connection to it through self-guided field trips. At least, one previous course in ecology or a similar topic is required. This course will arm you with one of the most important tools to work with and for nature in the coming decades.

Course structure: We will meet once a week on Friday at 8 am for two hours. The main structure of the course is divided into two main parts. The first part will be a discussion about the readings that will be assigned, which will focus on gaining a scientific and practical understanding of restoration. The second part will focus on case study analysis and a restoration project developed by students’ teams. Additionally, we will have guest lecturers from restoration companies and the academia and self-guided field trips to local restoration efforts in students’ residence areas.

?Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 01/19-01/21. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website. If you need assistance, please contact Estefanía Ibáñez.