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 examines the emerging context for real estate practice worldwide that measures success not solely by the financial bottom line but also by achievement of beneficial spatial, social, and environmental outcomes. Real estate developers, investors, owners, lenders, and public agencies globally are applying “environmental, social, and governance” metrics (ESG) to their investment and development decisions, even as some observers are skeptical about how effective or genuine this move is. Students will learn how transnational, national, and local legal mandates and market-driven preferences for sustainable and inclusive real estate can be viewed as positive, generative opportunities rather than constraints to be overcome. Understanding and operationalizing social and environmental principles can lead to a more successful and meaningful real estate practice whether originating in private for-profit, private not-for-profit, or public sectors.
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.
TThe first day of GSD classes, Tuesday, September 5th, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. As this course meets only on Tuesdays, the first meeting of this course will be on Tuesday, September 12th. 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.
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.
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.
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 GSD classes, Tuesday, September 5th, is held as a MONDAY schedule. As this course meets on Mondays, the first meeting of this course will be on Tuesday, September 5th. It will meet regularly thereafter.
This course is jointly listed with HKS as SUP-663.
Real Estate Finance, Development, and Management
This course teaches the fundamentals of real estate for all major property types and land uses. The various stages of the development process, including site selection, market analysis, financial feasibility, design considerations, legal requirements, construction oversight, lease-up, operations, and ultimate property disposition, are examined. Acquisition, management, and disposition of existing real estate assets are similarly explored. Teaching cases are designed to place students in decision-making situations commonly faced by real estate professionals. Methods of using discounted cash flow analysis for income property, for-sale property, construction and permanent mortgage loans, joint venture structures, real estate investment trusts, and secondary markets are explored. Optional review sessions focusing on real estate financial analysis will support the course. MRE students are required to take this course but may pursue a waiver of this requirement by successfully passing a waiver examination administered during orientation week. Other students will need to demonstrate a basic literacy in real estate through prior coursework or experience in order to take the class.
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 GSD classes, Tuesday, September 5th, is held as a MONDAY schedule. As this course meets on Mondays, the first meeting of this course will be on Tuesday, September 5th. It will meet regularly thereafter.
Introduction to Computational Design
#GSD6338 is an introductory course on Computational Design, with a particular focus on architecture, landscape and urbanism.
In this course, we will understand "Computational Design" as the set of methods borrowed from fields such as computer science, mathematics, and geometry, applied to solving design problems. Chances are that a significant portion of your typical design workflow is mediated by digital tools and, in particular, computer software that has been designed and created by a third party, and therefore, your creativity is partially biased by someone else's opinions. However, the real craftsman is the one who understands their tools so well that they can change, improve and adapt them to their own desires. In this course, you will learn how to think algorithmically, and how to understand and create computer software, so that you will be able to explore new creative opportunities and relate them to your personal interests.
The course will be conducted as a mix of lectures, hands-on workshops and sections that will introduce you to the conceptual and technical foundations of Computational Design. Coursework will be a blend of focused technical exercises and open-ended assignments, culminating in a final project of your choice at the end of the semester.
Basic knowledge of Grasshopper is strongly desired although not required; if you feel you do not meet this requirement, you will be required the first week to follow a series of tutorials and complete a small exercise. Additionally, previous knowledge of computer programming is NOT required; this is part of what you will learn in this course!
If you are interested in getting a better glimpse of the kind of work you will develop for the class, you can check work by course alumni on https://gsd6338.org/.
This course is the first installment of a three-part course series on Computational Design, followed by SCI-6483 Procedural Fields: Functional Design of Discrete Hyperdimensional Spaces (Spring) and SCI-6365: Enactive Design: Creative Applications through Concurrent Human-Machine Interaction (Fall), taught by the same instructor.
The first day of GSD classes, Tuesday, September 5th, is held as a MONDAY schedule. The course will meet for the first time on Thursday, September 7th and will meet regularly thereafter.
Water, Land-Water Linkages, and Aquatic Ecology
GSD 6333 covers water across the globe in relation to (1) land-water interactions, emphasizing hydrology and water quality, (2) aquatic ecology, and (3) human activities, including design questions and methodologies. While the course will focus on fresh waters, there will be limited coverage of near-shore coastal waters and coastal wetlands.
This course will provide students with an understanding of water that will inform their professional approaches to landscape architecture, architecture, and planning, and contribute to protecting, improving, restoring, and sustaining water resources. Emphasis will be placed on both the science and the application of this science in designs for projects involving a wide range of interactions with water including coastlines, inland rivers and lakes, and urban stormwater. With ongoing global changes in climate, urbanization, and the use of water for energy and food production, the relationship between humans and water will continue to grow and evolve. We will learn about environmental and land justice issues and think about their relationship to our design work. We will learn from members of the Indigenous communities about the importance of land, water, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). Students will come away from this course with a better understanding of our evolving relationship with water and the environment and how designs can account for hydrologic change and adaptation while also considering the local communities in which we work. While many varied case studies from around the U.S. and internationally will be discussed throughout the semester, much of the course content and assignments will involve hydrology, stormwater, and sea level rise in the Charles River and Boston Harbor; river and wetland restoration in Plymouth, MA; and stormwater and low-impact design in Washington, D.C.
Discussion of these focus areas will include design challenges, social issues, permitting, and the implementation process. Students will come away with a better understanding of how projects go from conceptual design to a constructed site. Students will be encouraged to bring water and ecology-related projects/challenges from other courses, studios, or projects to the class for an open discussion. Hands-on exercises include watershed delineation, hydrologic calculations to estimate runoff and groundwater infiltration and flow, design exercises developing recommendations for stormwater best-management-practices/low-impact design (LID) for a neighborhood in Washington, DC, and research and design exercises for river restoration projects. Multiple classes will have outside activities or visits to nearby river, wetland, and water-related sites, including the Alewife stormwater facility, Alewife Brook, and the Charles River. Attendance at a 2-day weekend fieldtrip with hands-on field sampling will be mandatory. A semester long group project will focus on the sites visited during this weekend fieldtrip and will culminate in a conceptual design of restoration and revitalization.
Evaluation: Based on class attendance and participation (including field trips), short written assignments, quizzes, focused design exercises, and a semester-long project.
Climate by Design
The climate crisis is here now and for the foreseeable future. For designers who shape the built environment, there is an urgent need to respond to the changing climate with greater understanding, sophistication, and imagination. To do so requires a community of learning committed to deeper analysis of the patterns of change and the potential roles designers may play in reducing carbon emissions and adapting to the many changes the future will bring. We must ask critical questions and interrogate existing systems of knowledge. What is climate change? How can designers approach it? What are the design strategies? How effective are they? Whom do they serve? And on what terms?
The effects and burdens of climatic change are unequal, contributing to increased social and economic disparity and often exacerbating historic patterns of inequity. The impacts are multiple and diverse as are the many cultures and communities that must respond and adapt. Therefore, a universal, one size fits all approach is not an adequate response. To develop design tools that respond to these conditions, we need to understand not only the science, but also the political, social, economic, and cultural contexts on the ground, where design projects and movements are rooted.
Through a series of lectures and case studies, this course will explore the range of paradigmatic design responses to the climate crisis. This foundation will be built through a series of talks by GSD faculty and external experts across a variety of fields. Lectures and panel discussions will cover both the science of and design response to the climate crisis including adaptation, mitigation, climate justice and activism. We will engage in discussion together and with these invited experts to advance our knowledge and interrogate existing practices.
Students will develop and analyze a case study, advancing methodologies for critical assessment and visual representation. The studies will consider social, cultural, and aesthetic dimensions as well as environmental function, economic deployment, and political engagement. These exemplary cases will be a means to understand and articulate the evolving role of landscape architecture and related disciplines in designing for an increasingly vulnerable planet. As such, the course will explore not only how landscape architects respond to the climate crisis, but what these actions say about the nature of design itself. The cases will be situated in different geographical and climatic contexts and the responses will be understood in relation to advances in science as well as the variations in political, environmental, economic, social, and historical context.
Climate by Design is a required course for MLA degree candidates and open to other GSD and Harvard students with an interest in the climate crisis and design.
The first day of GSD classes, Tuesday, September 5th, 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 5th. It will meet regularly thereafter.