Confronting Climate Change: A Foundation in Science, Technology and Policy (at FAS)
This course will consider the challenge of climate change and what to do about it. Students will be introduced to the basic science of climate change, including the radiation budget of the Earth, the carbon cycle, and the physics and chemistry of the oceans and atmosphere. We will look at reconstructions of climate change through Earth history to provide a context for thinking about present and future changes. We will take a critical look at climate models used to predict climate change in the future, and discuss their strengths and weaknesses, evaluating which forecasts of climate change impacts are robust, and which are more speculative. We will spend particular time discussing sea level rise and extreme weather (including hurricanes, heat waves, and floods). We will look at the complex interactions between climate and human society, including climate impacts on agriculture and the relationship between climate change, migration and conflict. We will also discuss strategies for adapting to climate change impacts, and the implications of those strategies for sub-national and international equity.
The last half of the class will consider what to do about climate change. First, we will review the recent history of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as various national and international efforts to limit them in the future. We will discuss reducing carbon emissions using forestry, agriculture and land use, and then focus on how to transform the world’s energy system to eliminate CO2 emissions. We will conclude by examining different strategies for accelerating changes in our energy systems to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
The course is intended as a foundational course on climate change for students from around the university, preparing them for more specialized courses in their individual concentrations or degree programs. No prerequisites are required; students will be encouraged to apply their different preparations and interests to the various individual and group assignments. The course emphasizes the scientific and technological aspects of climate change (including the clean energy transition), but in the context of current issues in public policy, business, design and public health.
This is a University course offered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences – GENED 1094.
Real Estate Private Equity [M1]
Real Estate Private Equity explores, in depth, the analysis, decision-making and challenges private equity investors face when:
1. making and structuring highly leveraged investments,
2. managing investments through turbulence if market difficulties emerge,
3. developing superior, differentiated portfolio strategies and successfully aligning these with institutional capital,
4. procuring and managing sources of equity and debt capital,
5. negotiating institutional investor capital agreements, local partner operating agreements and transaction execution agreements,
6. managing all the stakeholders involved in complicated real estate transactions when circumstances require change,
7. successfully building and managing their organizations for long-term sustainability in the midst of having to compete in an environment fraught with constant risk, uncertainty and geo-political and economic fluctuation.
The course will be structured in a format using actual business cases, where each case will tackle a situation and specific set of challenges faced by private equity investment groups. Cases will typically be 20 to 30 pages in length including a number of subsidiary agreements and schedules. Students will need to lay out the problems being addressed, probe the situation, develop the right questions to focus on, analyze the relevant data, and evaluate the best courses of action along with their anticipated outcomes. Case situations will be viewed from multiple perspectives: the private equity investor, their institutional capital sources, local operating partners, lending institutions, tenants, and many times public authorities and their representatives.
There are two modules that comprise the course. Each module will last ½ of the semester. Students have the option of taking just module 1 for two credits, or both modules 1 and 2 for 4 credits.
In module 1 we will be covering 5 business cases. The subjects of investigation and discussion will include
1. analyzing an international development/redevelopment joint venture opportunity,
2. examining the process of investing in debt securities in a complex transaction,
3. assessing a hostile tender offer of a public company and examining the responsibilities to all of the stakeholders in making the right decisions,
4. from an investment committee member’s perspective examining, evaluating and choosing between two disparate competing investment opportunities, a joint venture acquisition of a student housing project against a mezzanine debt investment in an international real estate operating service company,
5. Deriving what the optimum path forward should be in the launch and capitalization a new startup real estate development company.
In module 2, students will be tackling an independent study research paper which delves deeper into a topic of choosing in real estate private equity. Some potential areas to pursue include:
1. Developing a business plan to start a new real estate PE firm,
2. Evaluating the strategy and long term competitive viability of an existing real estate PE firm,
3. Analyzing a live, complicated real estate PE transaction,
4. Investigating and conducting a comprehensive research report to evaluate a given market opportunity,
It is expected that papers delivered for module 2 will be approximately 20-25 pages in length, single spaced, plus exhibits, quantitative analyses, and appendices.
Course prerequisites: 5275 and 5276 or other course equivalents.
Contemporary Developing Countries: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Problems (at FAS)
What problems do developing countries face, and how can individuals contribute to solutions rather than awaiting the largesse of the state or other actors? Intractable problems – such as lack of access to education and healthcare, forced reliance on contaminated food, deep-seated corruption – are part of the quotidian existence of the vast majority of five of the world’s seven billion people. Developing societies suffer from what we refer to as ‘institutional voids’ that make organized activities of all sorts difficult; think of the mundane but important physical infrastructure that allows us to get to work or school in the developed world, as well as our access to higher-order institutions such as the availability of information at our fingertips or the security of the rule of law. The course demonstrates that reflecting upon the nature of the developing world’s intractable problems through different lenses helps characterize candidate interventions to address them. The scientist’s hypothesis-driven and iterative experimentation, the artist’s imagined counterfactuals through putting oneself in others’ shoes literally and theatrically, and the planner’s top-down articulation of boundary conditions, all tailor the ultimate solution. The course will also examine entrepreneurial solutions that have sought to address challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic and by society’s response to it.
Prerequisites: None.
Jointly offered courses: Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) as GENED 1011.
Open to cross-registration for students from other schools and universities. May accept a limited number of auditors, pending instructor approval.
Informational sessions during shopping period are scheduled on August 18 at 2:00 and 2:30 EST and August 20 at 2:00 and 2:30 EST. The zoom sessions can be accessed via the liks below:
Preview Session 1 Tuesday, August 18 – 2:00 pm – 2:30 pm EST
Preview Session 2 Tuesday, August 18 – 2:30 pm – 3:00 pm EST
Preview Session 3 Thursday, August 20 – 10:00 am – 10:30 am EST
Preview Session 4 Thursday, August 20 – 10:30 am – 11:00 am EST
Urban Design for Planners
Course Objectives
This seminar course introduces physical planners to the approaches, techniques and tools of urban design necessary to structure the spatial and dimensional relationships of the built environment. Through an individual, Boston-based project, students will be required to give spatial definition and form to an urban district through the elaboration of streets, block and building morphologies, open space networks and typologies, and urban design guidelines. This course complements the first year Core Urban Planning Studios by concentrating on the design of urban spaces – informed by but independent of – the demands of quantitative analysis, decision-making frameworks, economic forecasting or the specifics of plan implementation.
Students in this class will learn urban design strategies for integrating form and program into a framework for research, collaboration, and communication. Students will gain familiarity with the technical tools and representational techniques essential for planners to portray development scenarios.
Methodology
The parameters for the site and program will be investigated at the outset of the course in order to begin with the investigation of urban form directly. The class will develop a spatial analysis of specific sites including but not limited to block patterns and parcelization, circulatory systems, open space characteristics, and relevant regulatory restrictions – easements, waterway setbacks, etc. Working individually, students will then create concept plans for specific interventions that will be elaborated throughout the remainder of the semester. The class will review urban design approaches for similarly scaled redevelopment projects, identifying relevant case studies from a range of urban design and planning practices. Students will develop their plans through the production of an urban design presentation board or boards that will include a street network plan, a public realm plan, a taxonomy of building types, three dimensional modeling of height and setback requirements and perspectival views conveying character. Techniques of representation will be customized by each student to align with their specific project approach in an acknowledgement of the relationship between representation and spatial or programmatic ideas.
Structure
The class will meet once per week, combining lectures, discussions and design reviews of individual students’ work. Grading will be based on successful completion of the urban design document described above. This course is primarily intended for first and second year planning students enrolled in the MUP program. Students outside this program may gain access to the class with permission from the instructor.
Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 08/31, and/or 09/01. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website.
Healthy Places: COVID-19 and Cities
The connections between health, well-being, and place are complex. This class uses COVID-19 as a starting point for examining how to make healthier places. It examines the health situation in different kinds of places and among key population groups. It explores how to assess environments and how to make changes that reflect knowledge from multiple disciplines and from local people.
The class will be divided into two streams—input and action. In the input part of the class students will engage readings, interact with authors, and discuss ideas. In the action component individuals and groups of students will develop an approach to improving well-being and health in places. These projects may engage clients or be more speculative.
Throughout the class students will also reflect on some larger questions. Can the ways that places are planned and designed improve health? What are the key health issues that should concern those in planning and related fields? Does the work of incorporating health issues into planning and design processes always add value? Is evidence-based practice really an improvement over business-as-usual? What is the relationship between the different approaches to incorporating health into planning and design practice: health assessments, built projects, regulations and policies, interagency coordination, and programs to change how places are used?
By the end of the course a student will be able to:
– Recognize the many determinants of health including, but not limited to, built environments.
– Understand, analyze, and evaluate research related to health and places.
– Comprehend the potentials and limitations of using research to create evidence-based interventions.
– Appreciate the roles of different disciplines, and of local knowledge, in working on issues connecting health and places.
– Identify points of leverage in designing and regulating the physical built environment, creating policies related to how it is used, and developing programs set in the built environment.
– Use tools for assessing environments and for creating healthier places.
– Articulate their own perspective on the relationship between health and place.
Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 08/31, and/or 09/01. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website.
Architecture and Construction: From the Vitruvian Tradition to the Digital
The course aims to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between architecture and construction through the study of key historical episodes such as the rise of modern tectonic ideals in the 18th century, the development of iron and concrete buildings, the 20th-century quest for light structures, or more recent developments in materials, structure and building technologies. The course will also raise theoretical questions such as what the terms material and structure truly mean, or how does architecture differ from mere construction. Beyond its historical and theoretical scope, the ambition of the course is also to foster students' reflection on the contemporary evolution of the relationship between architecture and construction. Indeed, the rise of digital technologies and more recently the development of strong environmental concerns challenge our received understanding of tectonics, materials, and ultimately design.
The course will consist of live lectures given online followed discussions. Lectures will be recorded and made accessible to the students of the course. Apart from regular attendance, the students will be asked to produce a short end-of-the-semester paper on a topic related to the course.
Plan of the course:
– Towards an Architectural History of Construction, Introduction
– Construction and Solidity in the Vitruvian Tradition
– The 18th-Century Crisis of Solidity and the Rise of the Structural Approach
– Early Iron Construction Development
– From Iron to Steel
– The Origin of Modern Concrete
– The Industrial Challenge from Ruskin to the Arts and Crafts
– Building Technologies in the 19th Century
– Structure and Ornament in the Industrial Age
– Modernist Architecture and Technology
– Concrete Engineering
– Concrete Architecture
– Early Space, Inflatable and Tensile Structures
– Buckminster Fuller, Jean Prouvé and the Search for a Revolution in Design
– Postwar Technological Utopias and Dystopias from Archigram to Radical Architecture
– The High-Tech Temptation
– Contemporary Advances in Materials and Structures
– Digital Architecture and the Rise of a New Materiality
– Digital Fabrication, Between Futurism and Nostalgia
– The Environmental Challenge: From Mechanics to Thermodynamics?
– Architecture, AI: What is Next? Conclusion
Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 08/31, and/or 09/01. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website.
The Idea of Environment
The environment is the milieu in which designers and planners operate. It is a messy world of facts, meanings, relations, and actions that calls them to intervene—that is, to make a plan, solve a problem, create a product, or strategize a process. They use various measures to assess and project their interventions from beauty and efficiency to systems and sustainability. Today, increasing volatility and uncertainty of the environment, however, alongside a growing sense and presence of crises and disasters, compels us to reconsider how we have imaged and imagined, defended and critiqued, planned and designed the environment. The class will explore how and what new approaches to representation, visualization, and measurement might lead to different relations in a changing world.
This class is a seminar focused on reading and discussion. Course participants will be required to submit weekly reading responses, to contribute to discussions online and in class, and to develop an original research and/or design project over the course of the semester.
Climate by Design
Through a series of case studies, this course will explore paradigmatic design responses to the climate crisis including adaptation (both for communities to remain and retreat) and mitigation (through increased carbon draw-down and reduced emissions). 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 architecture responds to the climate crisis, but what these actions say about the nature of design itself. The cases will be situated in different geographical contexts and the responses will be understood relative to advances in climate science as well as the variations in social, environmental, economic and political context.
There will be a series of lectures by GSD faculty and external experts across fields (science, policy, economics, humanities, design). Students will develop and analyze a case study, developing 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.
Climate by design is a required course for the MLA degree candidates (class of 2022) and open to other GSD and Harvard students with an interest in the climate crisis and design.
In Fall 2020, the course will meet two times per week for synchronous workshops, presentations and conversations with the class cohort, teaching faculty and invited guests. These synchronous sessions will be supported by additional asynchronous lectures, interviews, readings, and dossiers on the key case study projects.
Market Analysis and Urban Economics
This is a master’s level course intended to introduce students to urban economics and real estate market analysis. It covers urban market fundamentals and how they shape cities and neighborhoods. Key themes include: the economic role of cities, typologies of urban growth and form, bid-rent curves, household and firm location choices, the role of local government, housing, and the dynamics of local property markets. This course introduces students to the concepts, models, and methods used to analyze how economic forces impact (re)development processes, values, and locational patterns in real estate markets.
The course is structured as lectures and workshops, with synchronous and asynchronous components each week. Most weeks the structure will be one day of synchronous lecture and discussion, with a second day of modules (lectures, practice problems, reading responses, and engagement) that may be completed asynchronously.
Readings draw from classic, recent, and current works in urban economics, planning, and academic real estate literatures. Assignments reinforce urban economics concepts and the ability to analyze local property market fundamentals, identify new markets, and measure investment opportunities. Guest lectures by active real estate professionals will offer students the opportunity to learn from practitioners currently operating in the marketplace. Evaluation is based on weekly assignments, a midterm, and a final project/paper.
The course assumes no previous economic knowledge or training.
Spatial Analysis and the Built Environment
Urban planners engage in many complex processes that defy easy representation. This course provides first-semester urban planning students with the graphic and technical skills needed to reason, design, and communicate these processes with geospatial data. This knowledge will be embedded within a larger critical framework that addresses the cultural history of categorization, data collection, and cartography as tools of persuasion for organizing space.
Visual expression is one of the most compelling methods to describe the physical environment, and students will learn techniques specifically geared toward clarifying social, political, and economic dynamics and how they relate the structuring of spaces. The class will introduce fundamentals of data collecting, data formatting, and data importing into a Geographic Information System (GIS) environment.
Students will gain familiarity with the technical tools essential to GIS for making maps and exploring relationships in the physical, regulatory, and demographic dimensions of the landscape. Within GIS, students will learn the basics of geospatial processing to produce new forms of knowledge in support of ideas about urban planning and design. Desktop publishing tools, including Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign will be used to distil ideas into effective graphic presentations. The class will also advance techniques for representing form and space through diagramming and three-dimensional modeling programs.
Students will be introduced to workflows that demonstrate how to move effectively between data from these platforms and modes of representation. Class lectures will be complemented with technical workshops.
Objectives:
1. Establish a conceptual framework for critically engaging the practices of mapping and data visualization.
2. Provide a basic understanding of tools and techniques needed to reason, design, and communicate with geospatial data.
3. Develop students’ skill and confidence for visualizing the complex processes, flows, and dependencies unique to the planning discipline.
Course format: This course will meet via Zoom on Monday and Wednesday mornings. Wednesday meetings will typically begin with a 30-minute discussion of the day's reading assignment, followed by a 30-minute in-class exercise, which will often be a drawing exercise that can be done away from a computer. Wednesday sessions will conclude with a 30-minute discussion of key lessons and take-aways from that in-class exercise. An independent assignment will be assigned each Wednesday and due the following Monday. In Monday class sessions, students will present their work and receive feedback from their classmates and the instructor. Friday software tutorials will be also be offered on Friday mornings from 9am to noon. Attendance at these sessions is optional, and they will be recorded for students to view on-demand if they are unable to attend synchronously.
Prerequisites: Enrollment in the Urban Planning program.