Courses
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First Semester Core Urban Planning Studio
Ann Forsyth, Hannah Teicher, Anne-Marie Lubeneau, Jeana Dunlap, Lourdes Germán, Carole Voulgaris, Lindsay Woodson, Dana McKinney
First Semester Core Urban Planning Studio introduces students to the fundamental knowledge and technical skills used by urban planners to investigate, analyze, create, and implement…
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Elements of Urban Design
Peter Rowe, Yun Fu, Dana McKinney, Alex Yuen, Mark Heller, Michael Manfredi, Rahul Mehrotra
Elements of Urban Design is the advanced core studio for the post-professional Urban Design program. The studio introduces critical concepts, strategies, and technical skills associated…
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The Future of Housing in Los Angeles
Like most cities in the US today, Los Angeles doesn’t build enough housing to keep up with demand, a fact that has contributed to what…
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Desert Futures. Scenarios for a World of Extremes
Desert Futures is a multidisciplinary studio at the intersection of research, spatial design, and activism. It aims to spatialize and make visible the tensions between…
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Void infrastructures and lived responses
The site for this studio is two breathtakingly beautiful golf courses in Cape Town. We will build a city over them. Why? Currently, social justice…
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Engaging Energy Productions and Tourism Landscapes Towards a Circular Ecosystem in Iceland
Tourism in Iceland has grown at an unprecedent rate in recent decades. With numbers of visitors rising from 500 thousand in 2008 to over 2-milions…
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LATIN AMERICA IN TRANSITION: Ecological Design for Settlements & Climate Migration in Argentina
We face a vulnerable future due to the accelerated intensity of natural and humanitarian disasters. The resultant scale of unprecedented migration has been coupled with…
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Legacy Lands | Protopian Futures Reconciliation, Reclamation, and Reconstruction in Indianapolis
Practices of extraction, exclusion, discrimination, and devaluation are common to most historically Black American neighborhoods in the United States. While all suffered from periods of…
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Representation for Planners
One task of an urban planner is to grapple with and understand a series of complicated processes that directly affect the organization and experience of…
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Spatial Analysis
Planning decisions are often idealized as being "evidence-based" or "data-driven." Spatial data often comprise the data and evidence that support such these decisions. In this…
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Drawing for Designers: Techniques of Expression, Articulation, and Representation
The course is intended as a creative drawing laboratory for designers and an expressive, playful supplement to computer-based labor. This course will…
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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…
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Structuring Urban Experience: From the Athenian Acropolis to the Boston Common
This lecture course examines selected cities between the fifth century B.C. and the seventeenth century A.D., beginning with ancient Athens and ending with the rebuilding…
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Building and Urban Conservation and Renewal – Assessment, Analysis, Design
What are the values inherent in a property, site or district that must be understood to craft conservation policy and interventions that will reveal, complement,…
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Making the American City: Form and Society
This course examines major episodes in the history of American urban growth, design, and planning to understand the urgent social, environmental, and development issues of…
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Highways, Deforestation, and State-driven Colonization in Amazonia
Climate change has placed Amazonia at the center stage of global socio-environmental consciousness, particularly after the fires of 2019, which revealed the continental scale of…
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Real Estate Finance and Development
Richard Peiser, David Hamilton
This course teaches the fundamentals of real estate finance and development. Lectures and case studies introduce students to the full range of financial analysis skills…
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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…
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Cities by Design
Yun Fu, Eve Blau, Joan Busquets, Farès el-Dahdah, Alex Krieger, Rahul Mehrotra, Antoine Picon, Peter Rowe
Cities by Design is concerned with the in-depth longitudinal examination of urban conditions in and among selected cities in the world. The broad aims are:…
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Field Studies in Real Estate, Urban Planning and Design
Field Studies in Real Estate, Urban Planning and Design: Redeveloping the town center of a historic New England Town and New Visions for redeveloping one…
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Analytic Methods of Urban Planning: Quantitative
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…
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Analytic Methods of Urban Planning: Qualitative
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…
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Housing and Urbanization in the United States
Jennifer Molinsky, James Stockard
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…
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Urbanization and Development
This course examines the relationship between urbanization and development through an historical and contemporary lens, paying close attention to the ways that the growth and…
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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 await the largesse of the state or other actors? Intractable…
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Urban Ethnographies
Planners’ understanding of social process and cultural values is often woefully inadequate, and their thinking is dominated by a “one-size-fits-all” approach and by excessive attention…
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Land Policy and Planning for Equitable and Fiscally Healthy Communities
The course highlights the role land policy and land-based financing play in the development of equitable and fiscally healthy communities in developed and developing countries.
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Transportation Economics and Finance
We can define transportation infrastructure to comprise all the physical objects that provide mobility: including everything from trains, highways, and ports to sneakers, trails, and…
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Inclusive Cities in the Global South: From Development Narratives to Urban Forms
This seminar examines the notions of social inclusion and exclusion in cities according to different categories, including households’ income (wealthy and poor), identity (gender, race,…
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Urban Economics for Planners and Policymakers
This course introduces economic frameworks for understanding both the benefits and challenges of living in, working in and managing cities. Urban economics incorporates the concept…
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Confronting Climate Change: A Foundation in Science, Technology and Policy (FAS)
How can we address the issue of climate change, reducing the damages by preparing for impacts already underway and fixing the problem by transforming our…
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Real Estate and City Making in China
Real estate has increasingly become a compelling force in the process of city making, one uniquely capable of leading and guiding multiple steps in the…
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Stage and Street
This module explores performing spaces and practices in the city. Through four lectures, it presents some key issues: theatre buildings in relation to public spaces;…
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Independent Study by Candidates for Master’s Degrees
Jon Lott, Jock Herron, John May, Andrew Witt, Diane Davis, Malkit Shoshan, Megan Panzano, Mohsen Mostafavi, Oana Stanescu, Peter Rowe, Bing Wang, Christine Smith, Elizabeth Christoforetti, Erika Naginski, Elle Gerdeman, Martin Bechthold, Christopher Herbert, Jennifer Molinsky, Rahul Mehrotra, Ann Forsyth, Ajay Manthripragada, Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo Lopez, Abby Spinak, Allen Sayegh, Ewa Harabasz, Alex Wall, Preston Scott Cohen, Chris Reed, Jacob Reidel, Edward Eigen, Rachel Meltzer, Yasmin Vobis, Lisa Haber-Thomson, Stephen Ervin, Joan Busquets
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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Preparation for Independent Thesis Proposal for MUP, MAUD, or MLAUD
What does it take to complete a graduate thesis in the Department of Urban Planning and Design? The seminar introduces different types of theses that…
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Independent Thesis for the Degree Master in Design Studies
Antoine Picon, Edward Eigen, Holly Samuelson, Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich
(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, Diane Davis, David Moreno Mateos, Antoine Picon, Carole Voulgaris, Charles Waldheim
Thesis in Satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.
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Proseminar in PUBLICS: Of the Public. In the Public. By the Public
Public, as a noun or adjective, is not confined to a single discipline, practice, narrative or theory. It is instead, a complicated construct that can…
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Proseminar in MEDIUMS: On Making Culture, Technology, and Art
In this proseminar, we will take a critical look at the current and emerging landscape of design technologies and technologically driven design. We will examine…
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Proseminar in NARRATIVES: Word and Image as Narrative Structure
In our Proseminar, we will grapple with a selection of critical discussions on word and image as these have been formulated in aesthetic philosophy, literary…
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Proseminar in ECOLOGIES: Interrelated, In-between, Dynamic
Our aim in the proseminar is to explore the inherent inventedness of ecology as a field of inquiry, its distinctly relational nature, and the potential…