Affordable Housing and Community Development
This course is intended for students interested in the affordable housing crisis. Can governments alone solve this problem or are public-private approaches an answer? The course explores how affordable housing is created, preserved, and managed, as well as how community development strategies incorporate and extend beyond the provision of affordable housing. Specific methods to sponsor, permit, finance, design, construct, manage, and preserve affordable housing are presented, including use of public subsidies and regulatory mandates.
MRE students have prioritized enrollment in the Limited Enrollment Course Lottery. All MRE students who select this special MRE elective in the Lottery will be enrolled, with additional seats potentially available to other students.
The (New) Image of the City
In this course we will attempt to visualize cities as the outcomes of urban design. Through a reflexive method of visual and narrative investigation, each student will uncover and demonstrate a variety of experiential and structural characteristics of their chosen city. Acknowledging contemporary urban design as a decentralized practice, we will develop perspectives that cut across the various disciplines involved in shaping cities while addressing the many tangible and intangible dimensions that define any given city.
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 creative exercises, the course necessitates students' abilities to consume, interpret, and produce. The majority of the work for the course goes towards developing 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.
Designers with a robust representational repertoire will be those best suited to communicate their ideas and impact change in the coming generation. 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. Simultaneously, by representing cities at various scales, students will come away with the ability to read various urban conditions and engage directly with contemporary pluralistic urbanism.
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 strong foundation in 3D modeling with Rhino will be helpful, as is a curiosity and determination to test and acquire new skills and perspectives.
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 Thursday, September 5th. It will meet regularly thereafter.
Urban Ethnographies
Planners’ understanding of social process and cultural values is often woefully inadequate, and their thinking is dominated by a “one-size-fits-all” approach and by excessive attention to the values of an international middle class rather than to local experience. In this course, we will read some urban ethnography inspecting the interactions among local people, planners, anthropologists, architects, and builders in order to think against the grain, especially in cases where disputes over whose heritage is at stake dominate the discourse. We will also examine the role of conflict in shaping urban space and ask whether attempts to smooth it over are necessarily to the benefit of local populations, especially where internal factionalism and political dissent are at stake. Finally, we will also examine the role of urban space in shaping people’s subjectivities and ask what that role tells us about governmental structures and the way they affect ordinary people’s lives.
The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 3rd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. As this course meets on Monday, the first meeting of this course will be on Tuesday, September 3rd. It will meet regularly thereafter.
Urbanization and Development
This course examines the relationship between urbanization and development, paying close attention to the ways that the growth and structure of cities have and will influence the economic, social, and political prospects of their residents as well as the broader national contexts in which they are located, and vice-versa. With a focus on both theory and empirical evidence, the course’s main objective is to interrogate and deconstruct assumed ideas about relationships between urbanization and economic development, and to discuss the implications for equity, inclusion, ecological sustainability, and social as well as environmental justice. Although a majority of readings focus on Latin America, South Asia, East Asia, or other parts of the late industrializing world, where both positive and negative synergies between urban and national economic development have often set global South cities and nations on pathways different from advanced capitalist contexts, the course also uses several readings on the US and seeks to identify similarities and differences between various developmental contexts. It thus asks whether and how historical and/or contemporary patterns of urban growth are similar or different in global south and global north cities, and with what implications for urban futures? A second and related question that threads through this course is whether planners and designers in both the global North and the global South will need to operate differently if they are to secure a just and sustainable future for their residents? Given the fact that many of the current local-to-global threats of ecological destabilization resulting from anthropogenic climate change are themselves byproducts of prior patterns of national industrialization, resource extraction, and urban growth, will we need new territorialities of governance – including those that span or bypass the urban or even national scales and perhaps operate regionally – if planners and designers are to preserve and protect cities, nations, and citizens in both the immediate and long-term future?
The course is reading-intensive and geared towards graduate students from across the planning, design, and social science disciplines. It has no prerequisites.
The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 3rd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. As this course meets on Monday, the first meeting of this course will be on Tuesday, September 3rd. It will meet regularly thereafter.
Housing and Urbanization in the United States
This course examines housing as both an individual concern and an object of policy and planning. It is intended to provide those with an interest in urban policy and planning with a broad background on why housing matters and how its unique attributes a) give rise to certain policy and planning challenges and b) should shape how practitioners respond to these challenges. A major theme of the course is that consequences of previous policy and planning interventions have had lasting effects. These are reflected today in continued residential segregation by race and income, the persistence of barriers to affordable and healthy housing, and gaps in homeownership rates and housing wealth by race and ethnicity. The theme of structural racism as shaping access to housing over US history will be examined at some length.
The course first lays out a framework for understanding the roles housing plays in individuals’ lives, neighborhoods, and the metropolis. Class sessions examine the unique attributes and roles of housing, including the role of homes as constitutive of the private and domestic realms, housing as an icon and encoder of social status, and housing as a commodity. This section of the course also explores housing as a driver of urbanization and shaper of neighborhoods, as well as theories of neighborhood change.
The next four sessions of the course focus on government interventions into housing in the United States from the beginning of urbanization up to the 1960s. Classes cover early efforts to eradicate slums and improve housing for the poor; systematic efforts to enforce segregation by race in the early 20th century including the practice of redlining; federal involvement in homeownership and suburbanization, ; the policy motivations and design of early public housing and urban renewal programs; and local interventions to regulate the development of housing and access to it, particularly in suburbs.
The third section of the course focuses on a second wave of interventions arising in the 1960s in response to unanticipated consequences of earlier interventions, including public housing and urban renewal, as well as responses to demographic and economic shifts and the Civil Rights and citizen participation movements. This section of the course examines policy interventions aimed at affordability, including rental subsidy programs, fair housing law, and community development programs, and reflects new ideas about who should be in charge of revitalization plans and where federal assistance should be targeted.
The final section of the class takes us to the present, examining more recent trends shaping housing and planning and policy interventions. Sessions will focus on the housing and foreclosure crisis and its aftermath; recent trends in and responses to concentrated poverty and segregation by race and income; and gentrification. We will also take an in-depth look at the current housing situations of low-income households and housing’s relationship to poverty and health. Final classes will look at the implications of the ongoing affordability crisis for future housing supply, as well as demographic shifts and climate change that are forcing planners and policymakers to reevaluate the design of our housing stock and its location. Given the slow departure from the housing sphere by the federal government, these sessions will necessarily focus more on local responses to housing issues.
Real Estate, Society, Environment
This course explores an emerging worldwide context for real estate practice in which success is measured not solely by the financial bottom line but also by achieving beneficial social and environmental outcomes. Under such labels as sustainability, ESG, and social impact, for-profit and not-for-profit developers, investors, owners, lenders, philanthropic organizations, and public agencies pursue this broader agenda, supported by some and challenged by others from both inside and outside the real estate field.
Through lectures, readings, class discussion, and visits by guest speakers who will present project based-exercises, students will learn how transnational, national, and local policy mandates and market preferences for beneficial social and environmental outcomes can be seen as opportunities rather than constraints, and how aligning profit and purpose can lead to best practices for real estate organizations and more rewarding professional and personal engagements for real estate practitioners.
Although this is a limited enrollment course, MRE students should enroll directly during the open enrollment period and not enter the Limited Enrollment Course Lottery.
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 Thursday, September 5th. It will meet regularly thereafter.
Design for Real Estate
This course provides a comprehensive understanding of the role of design and design professionals in real estate, from project conception to project delivery to post-occupancy evaluation. The goal is to provide developers and owners with the knowledge and methodological tools arising from design to conceive and execute distinctive, financially successful, socially responsible, and environmentally sustainable projects. The course will include lectures with class discussion, short exercises, field trips to recently completed and in-the-works projects, and several guest speakers.
The course begins with an overview of the design standards that shape contemporary building types within asset classes as demanded by building codes, development regulations, underwriting benchmarks, market preferences, and the global standardization of building components and furniture systems. Understanding the rationale for the plan configurations and circulation armatures of specific real estate types helps clarify the role of efficiency metrics as key determinants of building design and the way that space is best configured to create future financial, social, and environmental value. The course also covers the market and regulatory-driven logic of site planning, including the relationship between streets, blocks, and development parcels in urban and suburban contexts.
Beyond exploring the programmatic and spatial interdependency of the components that make up real estate, the course looks at a variety of methods for integrating financial analysis and design considerations especially at when projects are being conceptualized. Students will be asked to explore approaches that balance risk mitigation, typically accomplished by relying on pre-existing models (“comps”), with more innovative approaches that aim to capture market share by defining new needs and audiences and proposing unprecedented but financially viable spatial and aesthetic configurations.
The course explores the interplay between developer as client and designer as professional, with special consideration for how the knowledge and skills of designers can be utilized more effectively by real estate practitioners. This is a required course for students in the Master in Real Estate program, but is open as well to urban design, planning, architecture, and landscape students who are interested in learning about the many ways that various considerations, including efficiency metrics, risk mitigation, and land values, shape contemporary buildings and new urban districts.
Although this is a limited enrollment course, MRE students should enroll directly during the open enrollment period and not enter the Limited Enrollment Course Lottery.
The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 3rd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. As this course meets on Monday, the first meeting of this course will be on Tuesday, September 3rd. It will meet regularly thereafter.
Analytic Methods of Urban Planning: Qualitative [Module 2]
How can planners understand places in a rich, meaningful, and yet systematic way? This module examines how qualitative approaches can be used in planning practice and research. Qualitative methods are particularly useful in answering why and how questions; investigating differing perceptions and values; understanding unique situations; and helping describe complex situations.
Focused on learning-by-doing, the class examines how to design a qualitative research project and reviews a range of data collection and analysis methods useful in community and organizational environments. With the aid of well-thought-out conceptual frameworks, qualitative research can be designed to make a coherent and meaningful argument. Students learn about collecting and reviewing artifacts, observing places, asking questions, engaging with diverse groups, and using visual techniques. Such data are frequently organized into specific kinds of outputs including case studies, scenarios, and evaluations. Students will try out these approaches in weekly exercises.
Analytic Methods of Urban Planning: Quantitative [Module 2]
This course introduces students to quantitative analysis and research methods for urban planning. The course begins with an examination of how quantitative methods fit within the broader analytic landscape. It then exposes students to basic descriptive statistics (including measures of central tendency and dispersion), principles of statistical inference, and a wide variety of analytic methods and their practical application. By the end of the course, students will be comfortable with many analytic techniques relevant to urban planning and policy, including: z-tests, t-tests, ANOVA, chi square tests, correlation, and multivariate regression. On a broader level, students will gain the ability to understand and critically question the kinds of analyses and representations of quantitative data encountered in urban planning and allied disciplines.
The aim of the course is to introduce students to key concepts and tools in quantitative analysis and research. Most importantly, however, the goal is to develop students’ intuition regarding data analysis and the application of statistical techniques. By the end of the course, students will be familiar with how common techniques of quantitative analysis can be applied to a wide variety of data. Students will also gain a sense of the strengths and weaknesses of quantitative data analysis and under what circumstances the tools learned in the class are best applied in practice. The course seeks to train technically competent, intellectually critical practitioners and scholars who are able to apply quantitative methods in a wide range of settings, and who are also aware of the wider analytic context into which these approaches fit. There is a focus throughout the course on epistemology and the ethics of claim-making. Over the course, students will deepen their understanding of how claims are made, how claims are connected to different forms of evidence, and what makes different kinds of claims credible.
Land Use and Environmental Law
As a scarce and necessary resource, land triggers competition and conflict over its possession and use. For privately owned land, the market manages much of the competition through its familiar allocative price-setting framework. However, because one person’s use of land affects individual and collective interests of others and market mechanisms alone do not always protect or promote such interests, laws enacted by legislative bodies, administered by government agencies, and reviewed by courts have arisen to fill the gap.
Encompassed in local ordinances, higher-level legislation, administrative rules, discretionary government decisions, constitutions, and judicial opinions, land use laws and environmental laws significantly shape the built and natural environment. For example, zoning’s use and density restrictions affect whether neighborhoods are demographically diverse or homogeneous, its height and setback restrictions sculpt the skyline. Environmental laws govern the extent to which land uses pollute air, water, and land, whether habitat is available for endangered species, and whether wetlands are preserved. Recently enacted laws are beginning to address the impacts of climate change, determining whether and how individuals may build or rebuild in areas vulnerable to floods, severe storms, forest fires, heat waves, and droughts.
Through lectures, discussions, readings, and a written exercise, this course provides students with a working knowledge of land use laws and environmental laws, the institutions that create, implement, and review them, and the issues that swirl around them. The course distinguishes law’s method from those employed by other disciplines and fields. The role of non-lawyers, including urban planners, designers, public policymakers, developers, and community activists in influencing, drafting, and implementing land use and environmental laws, is explored.
No prior legal background is assumed. Students with a legal background have found the course instructive. For pedagogical reasons, laws employed in the United States will be the main references, but comparisons with laws in other countries will be regularly made. Reading assignments are drawn from primary sources (legislation, constitutions, judicial opinions) and secondary sources (law review and journal articles, book excerpts, professional reports). A written exercise asks students to critically examine one provision of a zoning law and draft its replacement. An oral final exam will test overall fluency with the course subject matter.
The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 3rd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. As this course meets on Monday, the first meeting of this course will be on Tuesday, September 3rd. It will meet regularly thereafter.
This course is jointly listed with HKS as SUP-663.