Courses
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Second Semester Core Urban Planning Studio
Daniel D’Oca, Brie Hensold, Kathy Spiegelman, Carole Voulgaris, Richard Peiser
The second semester core planning studio expands the topics and methodologies studied in the first semester core studio, GSD 1121, aiming to prepare students for…
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Osaka – World Expos as Transformative Engine: Potentials for the Regular City
This studio focuses on the capacity of big urbanistic projects to direct the growth and transformation of large metropolises. It takes the example of Osaka…
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The Dam Studio: Climate Change Along the Mystic
Climate change presents one of the greatest challenges for cities. Extreme weather stresses infrastructures, nature, and the built environment. It impacts people, their health, safety,…
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ROCKET CITY: Envisioning a Future for the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL
The US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is NASA’s official Visitor Information Center for the Marshall Space Flight Center and receives over 1…
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After Amazon – What’s Next for LIC?
On February 14, 2019, New York City received an unexpected valentine from Amazon, announcing their withdrawal from a major new campus expansion project dubbed “HQ2.”…
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PUBLIC FIGURE/PRIVATE GROUND: Redevelopment of the FBI Site in Washington, DC
In 1790, Washington, DC, was established as the seat of political power in the newly formed United States. The plan and building form within the…
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TAISHAN: Designing the Rural Cosmopolis in China
Elaine Kwong, David Rubin, Kathryn Firth
Cosmopolitanism and its vibrancy are commonly associated with urban life; rural life by contrast is often seen as static, disconnected and monocultural. China’s rapid urbanization…
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Neuralisms Shenzhen: Fictions of Type and Territory
Shenzhen is China’s city of the future, a manufacturing and product development hub unlike any in the world. It is a place where innovation in…
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Drawing for Designers 2: Human Presence and Appearance in Natural and Built Environment
The aim of the class is to learn how to depict and express the presence and appearance of people in natural and…
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Designing the American City: Civic Aspirations and Urban Form
The course is an interpretative look at the characteristic patterns of settlement and attitudes towards cities and urban life that are identified…
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Urban Form: Transition as Condition
The fixed categories by which we have traditionally understood the urban no longer hold. They have been undermined by the multiplicity of…
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Urban Grids: Open form for City Design-2
Framework: Within a larger research scope on “Revisiting the urban grids in the XXI century”, this seminar will focus on the investigation…
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Modern Architecture and Urbanism in China
Modernizing influences, largely from the hands of foreign powers, first forcefully entered China in the aftermath of the Opium War and signing…
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Cities, Infrastructures, and Politics: From Renaissance to Smart Technologies
Infrastructures play a decisive role in urban development and the life of cities. This course will envisage this role from a historical…
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Conservation, Destruction, and Curating Impermanence
“History is what hurts.” -Fredric Jameson. This course deals with the political dimension of architectural, urban, and landscape conservation and aims to…
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Public and Private Development
This course provides a high-intensity introduction to the theory and practice of urban development in the contemporary United States. Through lectures, technical…
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Urban Politics, Planning, and Development (at HKS)
In the face of failures and dysfunction at the national level, there is growing excitement about the welfare- and democracy-enhancing potential of…
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Markets and Market Failures
This course provides a critical introduction to the creation and operation of markets, and assesses the criteria and circumstances under which they…
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Cities by Design II: Projects, Processes, and Outcomes
Cities are palimpsests. They are the spatial manifestations of a layering and re-layering of social and environmental systems over time. Cities by Design II is…
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Advanced Real Estate Finance
This course builds on GSD 5204 and comparable introductory real estate courses offered by other schools at Harvard. This year’s course covers…
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Building and Leading Real Estate Enterprises and Entrepreneurship
This course focuses on how you conceive, build and lead successful real estate companies. By virtue of the industry in which they…
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Theories for Practice in Conflict, Crisis, and Recovery
Course topics and objectives: How do we understand the relationship between crisis, recovery and the built environment at the beginning of the…
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Housing and Urbanization in Global Cities
Housing and Urbanization in Global Cities examines housing policy and planning in urban societies around the world and especially in the Global…
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Global Perspectives on Shelter Insecurity and Displacement
This course examines the drivers of, and responses to, global shelter insecurity and displacement. It addresses these issues in both the Global…
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Environment, Economics, and Enterprise
Holly Samuelson, Frank Apeseche
How can one optimize the benefits of environmental or social sustainability while generating a higher return on investment in buildings? Where are…
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Community Development: History, Theory, and Imaginative Practice
Community development is a heterogeneous and contested field of planning thought and practice. The profession has generally prioritized people and places that…
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Urban Design and the Color-Line
“History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history. If we pretend…
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Developing for Social Impact
How can real estate development advance social purpose while accounting for development feasibility? With increasing urgency, those involved in shaping the…
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CoDesign Field Lab: Program Evaluation for Change Leadership
CoDesign Field Lab is a project-based research seminar (4 units) in which GSD students will work directly with Boston-based community, civic, and philanthropic organizations; planners;…
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Queer Spaces
How do queer populations form communities and locate those communities in urban space? How do urban governance structures support and/or regulate these…
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Local Government Solutions to America’s Affordable Rental Housing Challenge
Christopher Herbert, James Stockard, Bennett Hecht
There are 10.9 million renters who are severely housing cost burdened – spending more than 50% of their income on shelter. The…
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Urban Mixed-Use Development in Paris, FRANCE & Regeneration Project in Boston, MA
In today’s increasingly connected urban centers, shifts in cultural preferences, design thinking, and spatial significations often reflect and parallel transitions in capital forces and economic…
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Implementation: Strategy, Management and Leadership: Lessons from the Field (at HKS)
This course will include both cases and readings that address the analytical challenges and the tools that are necessary to produce…
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Urban Design for Planners
Course ObjectivesThis seminar course introduces physical planners to the approaches, techniques and tools of urban design necessary to structure the spatial…
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Creating Real Estate Ventures: a Legal Perspective
The course will examine how a commercial real estate deal is put together to move a project from conception to completion. The…
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The Gentrification Debates: Perceptions and Realities of Neighborhood Change
Gentrification and the real and perceived impacts that neighborhood change has on longtime local residents as well as new dwellers, is complicated…
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Affordable and Mixed-Income Housing Development, Finance, and Management
Explores issues relating to the development, financing, and management of housing affordable to low and moderate income households. Examines community-based development corporations, public housing authorities,…
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Public Space
In a digital age, does physical public space matter? Tahrir Square, the streets of Hong Kong, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Zuccotti Park, Madrid Rio, and other…
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Independent Study by Candidates for Master’s Degrees
Stephen Ervin, Dingliang Yang, Ann Forsyth, Lisa Haber-Thomson, Emily Wettstein, Elizabeth Whittaker, Rahul Mehrotra, Mark Lee, Charles Waldheim, Jennifer Molinsky, Oana Stanescu, Carole Voulgaris, Sai Balakrishnan, K. Michael Hays, Andrew Holder, Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, Ivan Panushev, Joan Busquets, Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo Lopez, Ewa Harabasz, Sean Canty, Lily Song, Daniel D’Oca, Jock Herron, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Yusuke Obuchi, Alex Wall, Richard Peiser, Danielle Choi, Iman Fayyad, Jesse M. Keenan, Max Kuo, Belinda Tato, Michael Hooper, Jorge Silvetti, Allen Sayegh, Erika Naginski
Students may take a maximum of 8 units with different GSD instructors in this course series. 9201 must be taken for either 2, or 4…
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Independent Thesis in Satisfaction of the Degree MAUD, MLAUD, or MUP
Following participation in the department’s fall thesis preparation seminar (GSD 9204), the spring term of the second year sees students complete, defend, and submit…
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Independent Thesis for the Degree Master in Design Studies
Sai Balakrishnan, Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich, Allen Sayegh, George Thomas, Alex Wall, Dilip da Cunha, Edward Eigen, Ann Forsyth, Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo Lopez, Lisa Haber-Thomson, K. Michael Hays, Gary R. Hilderbrand, Michael Hooper, Alex Krieger, Ali Malkawi, John May, Rahul Mehrotra, Toshiko Mori, Erika Naginski, John Peterson, Robert Pietrusko, Peter Rowe, Holly Samuelson, Malkit Shoshan, Susan Snyder, Abby Spinak, Krzysztof Wodiczko
(Previously "Open Projects”) Prerequisites: Filing of signed "Declaration of Advisor" form with MDes office, and approval signature of the program director. A student who selects…
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Independent Study by Candidates for Doctoral Degrees
9502 must be taken for either 2 or 4 units. Under faculty guidance, the student conducts an independent reading program and formulates a thesis proposal.
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Thesis in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design
Martin Bechthold, Ann Forsyth, Niall Kirkwood, Ali Malkawi, Erika Naginski, Antoine Picon, Peter Rowe
Thesis in Satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.
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Discourse and Research Methods
Research conducted in the Doctor of Design Program (DDes) at the GSD spans a broad range of topics and areas of investigation that not only…
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Discourse and Methods II
This seminar serves as an introduction to prevalent critical approaches and methodologies in the history and theory of the design disciplines. The focus will be…