Planners are increasingly called upon to respond to interests and values of stakeholders, diverse parties, concerned citizens, governing entities, and the general public. Cross cutting issues often require integrated activities across multiple disciplines, such as the need for climate change plans and polices to balance decisions of land use, housing, transportation, and environmental protection.

This world of complexity can feel as though one is diving into the seeming chaos of a Jackson Pollock painting. How can one make sense of and effectively respond to such planning and policy challenges? Some five decades ago, experimentation among planners yielded the field of public policy mediation. Since then, planners have applied and adapted negotiation, facilitation, consensus building, and public engagement processes to build actionable plans and policies to address complex problems.

This course will focus on developing a set of nested and increasingly advanced skills of negotiation and consensus building. It will focus on three questions: What contributes to productive negotiations? How do we analyze complex circumstances to identify critical components to work toward resolution? How do we design consensus building processes, tailored to unique situational characteristics, to build actionable plans and policies?

By exploring these questions, this course will help students develop skills to be better negotiators and problem solvers. They will learn to prepare to negotiate, negotiate purposefully and thoughtfully, and critically evaluate outcomes and experiences.

After negotiation basics, the course will focus on skills of planners as problem solvers. Students will learn to effectively prepare for negotiations individually, and with assistance from AI bots. Students will practice facilitation and mediation skills, including the ability to simultaneously consider multiple perspectives on issues amidst unbridgeable difference. They will learn to conduct situational assessments of complex problems on provided cases and cases of personal interest. Finally, efforts will turn to the design of processes for productive negotiations among diverse parties that integrate public input and technical information.

The course will be highly interactive and practice-based. It will use exercises and role plays, videos, self-selected policy cases, discussions, and lecturettes to highlight key ideas. The varied case examples will cover issues including land use, development, housing, environment, abortion, and indigenous sacred lands.

Note regarding the Fall 2025 GSD academic calendar: The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 2nd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. This course will meet for the first time on Tuesday, September 2nd.