First Semester Core Urban Planning Studio

First Semester Core Urban Planning Studio introduces students to the fundamental knowledge and technical skills used by urban planners to investigate, analyze, create, and implement plans and projects.

In this studio Boston provides the location for developing skills and strategies to address and understand the local in its wider context. In planning the local area is of great importance and planners need to engage the particularities of districts, neighborhoods, towns, cities, and regions. Planners also understand and engage the wider context of places–in terms of physical scale, historical development, built character, social groupings, political structures, environmental attributes, economic activities, and future possibilities.

The course focuses on four key challenges of contemporary urban planning–equity, access, health, and climate.

While the US legacy of white supremacy raises questions of great urgency, the question of how planning can help make places more just and equitable is an enduring and foundational concern in planning.
Towns and cities exist to help people gain access to nearby resources such as jobs, services, and cultural opportunities for all. Technological developments have been changing whether one needs to be mobile in order to have access to resources; access to affordable housing is also key.
The COVID pandemic has highlighted the continuing challenge of infectious diseases even as non-communicable diseases and injuries remain the major health problems amenable to prevention through changes to the built environment.
Anthropogenic climate change is challenging planners to mitigate its effects and adapt to changes already underway, while also addressing other environmental challenges from water pollution to habitat loss.
There are no easy answers; the critical and creative skills of the urban planner are being called upon now more than ever to advance the notion of a just society.

Planners address messy situations where the problems are disputed and the solutions contested. They identify issues, gather and analyze information, listen to opinions, draw on precedents, raise ethical concerns, and consider the future. They figure out the important questions to answer, engage stakeholders, propose strategies, communicate ideas, and create and revise proposals. In this studio students gain experience engaging with complex and unclear situations in ways that can lead toward plausible and ethical approaches to addressing them.

The studio teaching approach is one of creating a setting for producing learning rather than delivering instruction about exactly what you should do. The process is collaborative and iterative. This can be a bit uncomfortable at first, but it is a low-risk environment. The assignments take you through a sequence of exercises that include reflection, analysis, proposal-making, and implementation while also addressing challenges (equity, access, health, and climate). These occur at different scales and require both individual and group work. Students also experiment with how to effectively communicate with others using different visual, oral, and written techniques and media in pinups, slides, posters, and online presentations in in-person and virtual settings.
 

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.