Courses
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Second Semester Core Urban Planning Studio
Daniel D’Oca, Stephen Gray, Brie Hensold, Kathy Spiegelman, 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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SAO PAULO REACTION: TAMANDUATEÍ RIVER MOUTH
Cristiane Muniz, Fernando Viegas
The city of São Paulo grew dramatically during the 20th century. However, the transformation of the small village into the largest South American metropolis in…
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Xiamen Studio. Merging urban development and natural landscape.
Merging urban development and natural landscape: Searching for “spectacular or regular” projects? The Studio Option focuses on the capacity of large-scale projects to direct the…
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Building Respect on San Francisco’s Third Street
In the past decade (prior to the presence of the Coronavirus), San Francisco’s economy experienced its most substantial growth in nearly a century. Two factors…
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DIVIDING BRIDGES & BRIDGING DIVIDES. A studio on infrastructures and their consequences
Cities fail their citizens if they adapt too slowly. The pace of adaptation is, in part, dependent on the capacity of spatial practitioners to reimagine…
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FRINGE CITIES: The legacies and future of renewal in the small American city
Across the nation, small, post-industrial cities today occupy a critical boundary between our polarized metropolitan hubs and vast rural landscapes. These are the Fringe Cities.
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Quo Vadis, Addis? Manufacturing-led Urbanization in Ethiopia – Empower Design!
The studio ‘Quo Vadis, Addis?’ addresses the question of how to integrate existing manufacturing zones in the textile and garment sector within the socio-spatial fabric…
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Below and Beyond: Imagining the future of underground infrastructure at Harvard Square
This studio aims to propose a near-future scenario for the Brattle Tunnel, a piece of decommissioned train infrastructure located under Harvard Square. As the oldest…
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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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Material World
“Who is it that the Earth belongs to?” Bangstad, Sindre, and Nilsen Torbjørn Tumyr. "Thoughts on the Planetary:…
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Urban Grids: Open form for City Design-2
The historic evolution of the city can be tied to “regular systems” that have allowed for rational forms of development, which can…
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Histories and Theories of Urban Interventions
This course provides an introduction to the critical histories and theories of urban intervention and formation, and to the disciplinary practices of urban planning and…
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Modern Architecture and Urbanism in China
Contrary to many interpretations, by the early Qing Dynasty some modern traits, in the accepted Western sense of modernity, had entered China…
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Cities, Infrastructures, and Politics: From Renaissance to Smart Technologies
Infrastructures play a decisive role in urban development and in the life of cities. This course will envisage this role from a…
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Public and Private Development
Cities are developed by a complex blend of public and private actors and actions. This course employs a combination of lectures, discussions, readings, case studies,…
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Urban Politics, Planning, and Development (at HKS)
In the face of failures and dysfunction at the national level, the welfare- and democracy-enhancing potential of cities has come into focus in recent years.
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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 21st century? Conflicts…
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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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Urbanization and Development
This course examines the relationship between urbanization and development, paying close attention to the ways that public and private sector priorities, legal frameworks, land use…
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U. S. Housing Markets, Problems, and Policies
This course will examine the operation of U.S. housing markets, the principal housing problems facing the nation, and the policy approaches available…
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Environment, Economics, and Enterprise
Holly Samuelson, Frank Apeseche
This course blends two shades of green: sustainability and money. It focuses on the intersection between environmental and social opportunities in the…
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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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Experimental Infrastructures
Infrastructure is an encompassing term that can refer to anything from railroad ties to social media to ecosystems, and one which has…
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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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Making Participation Relevant to Design
By trying to understand how participation can make design more relevant to society, we can create more socially just cities. This course…
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Developing for Social Impact
How can real estate development advance social purpose while accounting for development feasibility? With increasing purposefulness, those involved in shaping the…
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CoDesign Field Lab Black Belt Study for the Green New Deal
Biden’s historic win in Georgia, along with the disproportionate impacts of COVID and heightening vulnerability to climate change, bring into clear relief…
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Local Government Solutions to America’s Affordable Rental Housing Challenge
Christopher Herbert, James Stockard, Bennett Hecht
There are more than 10 million renters who are severely housing cost burdened – spending more than 50% of their income on…
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Cities and the Urban Informal Economy: Rethinking Development, Urban Design and Planning
Rahul Mehrotra, Martha Chen, Biswapriya Sanyal
Since the emergence of the concept of the ‘urban informal economy’ in the early 1970s, there have been multiple interpretations as well as applications of…
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Climate Justice
Recent discourse around climate change—including debates about the Anthropocene, Green New Deal legislation, the plight of climate refugees, the dire warnings of…
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Hidden Figures: The City, Architecture and the Construction of Race and Gender
What hidden figures do our buildings and urban environment conceal? There exists systematic erasure of the contributions of Women of Color…
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Architectures of the New Silk Road
Sino-African Infrastructure-led Urbanization – Deficits and Potentials China’s Belt and Road Initiative can be considered one of the largest and possibly most…
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Native Americans in the 21st Century: Nation Building II (at HKS)
This community based research course focuses on some of the major issues Native American Indian tribes and nations face in the 21st century. It provides…
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The United States and China
The United States and China are global economic and military powers. They have a rich history of commerce, friendship, alliance, and antagonism. Both countries have…
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Modern Housing and Urban Districts: Concepts, Cases and Comparisons
This seminar course deals with ‘modern housing’ covering a period primarily from the 1900s to the present. It engages with ‘urban districts’…
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Creating Real Estate Ventures: a Legal Perspective
This course will examine, through the lens of the legal documentation involved at each step, how a complex commercial real estate deal is put together,…
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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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Mapping: Geographic Representation and Speculation
Maps both represent reality and create it. It is in the context of this contention that this course presents the fundamentals of…
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Independent Study by Candidates for Master’s Degrees
Ann Forsyth, Mohsen Mostafavi, Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo Lopez, Paul Nakazawa, Lisa Haber-Thomson, Lily Song, Rosalea Monacella, Iman Fayyad, Hyojin Kwon, Allen Sayegh, Ewa Harabasz, Sharon Johnston, Joan Busquets, Jock Herron, Andrew Witt, Martin Bechthold, Karen Janosky, Preston Scott Cohen, Jacob Reidel, Alex Wall, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Gareth Doherty, David Gamble
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
Abby Spinak, Jonathan Grinham, George Thomas, Ali Malkawi, Allen Sayegh, Ann Forsyth, Charles Waldheim, Chuck Hoberman, Danielle Choi, Diane Davis, Edward Eigen, Eric Howeler, Eve Blau, Gareth Doherty, Holly Samuelson, Jacob Reidel, Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo Lopez, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Lisa Haber-Thomson, Malkit Shoshan, Pablo Pérez-Ramos, Sarah M. Whiting, Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, Susan Snyder
(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
Ann Forsyth, Peter Rowe, Ali Malkawi
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, Rahul Mehrotra, Peter Rowe, Charles Waldheim
Thesis in Satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.
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Discourse and Methods I
This course is open only to Ph.D. students in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and Design (Ph.D. students from other departments may participate with…
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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…