Courses
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Second Semester Core Urban Planning Studio
Daniel D’Oca, Stephen Gray, Rachel Meltzer, Brie Hensold, Adam Baacke
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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Leveraging Boston’s Building Boom to Advance Equity
A transit-oriented development on Dorchester Bay is a case study in creating ties to institutions and diverse neighborhoods on the south side of the city. …
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Airport Urban Districts for a New Age
Rethinking airports in the context of environmental crisis challenges for exploring efficient intermodal transportation nodes as new frontier for developing the future. The right combination…
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A Moratorium on New Construction
“We need to stop constructing in order to start building.”— Menna Agha Back in March 2020, everything stopped. Or so it seemed. Worldwide, construction…
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Transversal Grounds: Engaging Infrastructure, Landscape and Heritage for Lima’s New Urban Commons
Sandra Barclay, Jean-Pierre Crousse
In developing countries, heritage sites in urban settings often collide with urban growth and economic expansion. Lima has more than 385 archeological sites within its…
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LATIN AMERICA IN TRANSITION: Imagining Infrastructures for Climatic Migration
The world is facing a moment of growing climate and migratory uncertainty. The accelerated intensity of natural and humanitarian disasters is giving rise to new…
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Quo Vadis, Addis?
The design studio Quo Vadis, Addis? addresses the question of how to integrate manufacturing in the textile and garment sector within the socio-spatial fabric of…
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Houston: Extreme Weather, Environmental Justice and the Energy Transition
This multidisciplinary studio will use the lenses of climate adaptation, climate mitigation and climate justice to explore the design opportunities that could come with a…
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Bangkok: New Landscapes of Equity and Prosperity
Anita Berrizbeitia, Alejandro Echeverri
This studio will bring together faculty and graduate students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to imagine how Bangkok can be designed for the future as a…
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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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Urban Grids-3:Grid Plan versus Big Project
Within a larger research scope of exploring open forms for city design, this seminar will focus on a clear discussion of two…
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Homes on Fields
"How can one understand the towns without understanding the countryside, money without barter, the varieties of poverty without the varieties of luxury,…
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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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Chinese Modern Architecture and Urbanism
This course concentrates on four periods of modern architecture and planning in China. The first spans from the 19th century 'treaty ports'…
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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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The Spectacle Factory
The Spectacle Factory examines the modern history of immersive theater, entertainment, and media spaces from the standpoint of the history of architecture and design. It…
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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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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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U. S. Housing Markets, Problems, and Policies
This course examines the operation of U.S. housing markets, the principal housing problems facing the nation, and policy approaches to address them…
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Environment, Economics, and Enterprise
Holly Samuelson, Frank Apeseche
This course focuses on the intersection between environmental and social opportunities in the built environment and the economic impact they have on…
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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
We cannot talk about physical infrastructure in the United States without also talking about race. This seminar/workshop introduces students to the role…
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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
This course explores a question with great currency but no methodology: how can real estate development both advance social purpose and account…
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Local Government Solutions to America’s Affordable Rental Housing Challenge
James Stockard, Bennett Hecht, Kimberly Driggins
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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Travel Behavior and Forecasting
All planning is based on planners’ beliefs about the future. In many cases, the most important (and most uncertain) aspects of the future relate to…
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Cities and the Urban Informal Economy: Rethinking Development, Urban Design and Planning
Rahul Mehrotra, Martha Chen, Biswapriya Sanyal
This interdisciplinary course, led by an urban designer, an urban planner, and a leading global advocate for the urban working poor, intends…
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Global Leadership in Real Estate and Design
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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Climate Justice
Recent discourse around climate change—including debates about the Anthropocene, Green New Deal legislation, the dire warnings of the IPCC, to name a…
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Urban Design for Planners
This course introduces physical planners to the approaches, techniques and tools of urban design necessary to structure the spatial and dimensional relationships…
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Architectures of the New Silk Road – Spaces of Transnational Infrastructure-led Urbanization
The aim of the seminar entitled “Architectures of the New Silk Road” is to devise pathways for making emerging spaces of urbanization along New Silk…
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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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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 examines, through the lens of the legal documents involved, how a complex commercial real estate deal moves from conception to completion. We will…
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Designer Developer
Design and finance can both be understood as universal languages. Although architects, landscape architects, and planners are trained to produce and interpret design, it is…
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Land Loss, Reclamation, and Stewardship in Contemporary Native America
Daniel D’Oca, Eric Henson, Philip Deloria
This course will explore three critical dimensions in American Indian land issues: historical land loss, contemporary tribal governmental efforts at land reclamation, stewardship, and co-management. …
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Public Finance for Planners: Creating Equitable & Sustainable Communities
Infrastructure challenges are significant and rising. To meet these challenges, urban planners will need to acquire foundational knowledge and skills in the public finance discipline…
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Policy Analysis: A Tool for Evidence-Based Decision Making
Policy analysis is problem solving. It involves making systematic comparisons across a set of alternatives to address a particular policy or planning problem, usually in…
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New Towns and Affordable Housing Development in Africa
This course is a research seminar delving into new town development and affordable housing production in Africa. The course provides an overview…
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The (New) Image of the City
The rest of the 21st century is being drawn right now. More than ever before, organizations and individuals rely on projective images that indicate their…
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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 very low, low, and moderate income households. Examines community-based development corporations, public…
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Urban Governance and the Politics of Planning in the Global South
This course starts from the premise that urban politics and governance arrangements shape the character, form, and function of cities as well…
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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
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
(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
Thesis in Satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.
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Discourse and Research Methods
This course is mandatory for first year doctoral students and its aim is to expose them to faculty and various modes of thought and application…
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Discourse and Methods II
The objective of the seminar is to examine and discuss in depth some of the main methodological issues that students enrolled in the PhD program…