Courses
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First Semester Core Urban Planning Studio
Toni L. Griffin, Sai Balakrishnan, Kathryn Firth, Lily Song, David Gamble
The first semester core studio of the Master in Urban Planning program introduces students to the fundamental knowledge and technical skills used by urban planners…
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Elements of Urban Design
Rahul Mehrotra, Stephen Gray, Dennis Pieprz, Linda Pollak, Yun Fu, Michael Manfredi
Elements of Urban Design is an 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 New Selma
More than three years have passed since a white police officer in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson shot and killed an unarmed black…
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A Campus in a City – A City in A Campus: Harvard and Allston
While Harvard University’s roots are firmly planted in the City of Cambridge, the university now owns more land in the City of Boston. The slow…
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Gendering Urban Development: Making room for women in urban planning and design in Argentina
Chelina Odbert, Ignacio Cardona
“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” – Jane Jacobs Having adopted the…
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Multiple Miamis
This interdisciplinary studio will take on questions of how design can address issues of inequity, race, affordability, and resilience in the context of the contemporary…
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The Agency of Mezcal in the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico
The Oaxaca Valley in Southern Mexico is known for its cultural heritage but also for its high levels of poverty and unemployment. Limited access to…
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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…
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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 and a playful supplement to computer based labor.
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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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Spaces of Solidarity
‘Spaces of Solidarity’ aims at examining community-driven spaces and spatial processes that pool and share resources to build social cohesion in times…
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History and Theory of Urban Interventions
This class provides a high-intensity introduction the history and theory of urban planning practice under modern capitalism. Building upon an interdisciplinary literature drawn from planning…
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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…
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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…
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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 I
Rahul Mehrotra, Jerold S. Kayden, Alex Krieger, Eve Blau, Joan Busquets, Peter Rowe, Antoine Picon
Cities by Design I is concerned with in-depth longitudinal examination of urban conditions in and among selected cities in the world. The…
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Field Studies in Real Estate, Planning, and Urban Design: Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, and Andover, MA
The Field Study course is designed to provide students an understanding of the dynamics and complexities of real world development challenges that…
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Policy Making in Urban Settings (at HKS)
An introduction to policymaking in American cities, focusing on economic, demographic, institutional, and political settings. It examines economic development and job growth in the context…
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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: Qualitative
How can planners understand places in a rich, meaningful, and yet systematic way? This module examines how qualitative approaches can be used…
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Transportation Policy and Planning (at HKS)
The course is intended to develop in students an understanding of the management, policy and planning problems that are peculiar to transportation and other types…
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Housing and Urbanization in the United States
James Stockard, Jennifer Molinsky
This course examines housing as both an individual concern and an object of policy and planning. It is intended to provide those…
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Healthy Places
The connections between health, well-being, and place are a complex. This class focuses on four topics that will be important in coming decades: a place,…
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Critical Perspectives in Environmental Planning
What is the relationship between the natural environment and the design of successful places? How do we know? And how can we…
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Contemporary Developing Countries: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Problems (at FAS)
This course will provide a framework (and multiple lenses) through which to think about the salient economic and social problems of the five billion…
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Metropolitics: Comparative Metropolitan Governance
More than 50% of the world population lives in cities, and will reach two thirds by 2060. Almost half of the urban…
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Economic Development Planning
This course will look at the theory and practice of economic development at the local and regional level, mostly in the context…
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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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Form+Finance: the Design of Real Estate
This course exposes students to tools, instruments and strategies for design thinking and the mechanisms of finance and market forces that shape and impact built…
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The Spatial Politics of Land: A Comparative Perspective
This course focuses on the deeply contested and political processes of land-use planning, i.e. of allocating land amongst different, often competing uses,…
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Public Space
In a digital age, does physical public space matter? Tahrir Square, Zuccotti Park, Madrid Rio, and the High Line argue yes, with ambitions ranging from…
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Mapping: Geographic Representation and Speculation
Maps do not represent reality, they create it. As a fundamental part of the design process, the act of mapping results in highly authored views…
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Applied Urban Analytics
The course will investigate a number of qualitative and quantitative methods to measure and analyze urban spatial problems relevant to contemporary urban…
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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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Multiple Miamis Project-based Course: Infrastructure, Affordability, Identity + the Public
The Miami project-based course will explore how urban planning and design can promote affordable housing, retail, and services, public mobility and access,…
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Independent Study by Candidates for Master’s Degrees
Jock Herron, Karen Janosky, Joan Busquets, Diane Davis, Sai Balakrishnan, Martin Bechthold, Neil Brenner, Danielle Choi, Daniel D’Oca, Sonja Dümpelmann, Edward Eigen, Ann Forsyth, Jenny French, Ewa Harabasz, Sawako Kaijima, Allen Sayegh, Andres Sevtsuk, Jorge Silvetti, Andrew Witt, Preston Scott Cohen, Steven Handel, Oana Stanescu, Mack Scogin, Christopher Herbert, Lily Song, Gareth Doherty, Panagiotis Michalatos, Holly Samuelson, Jonathan Grinham, Francesca Benedetto, Niall Kirkwood, Sebastien Marot, Eric Howeler, Michael Hooper, K. Michael Hays, Robert Pietrusko, Malkit Shoshan, Grace La, John May, Andrew Holder, Tomás dePaor, Dilip da Cunha, Lea-Catherine Szacka, Marty Poirier, Stephen Gray, John Peterson
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
This seminar is intended to provide the theoretical and methodological foundation for completing a graduate thesis in the Department of Urban Planning and Design. By…
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Independent Study by Candidates for Doctoral Degrees
Niall Kirkwood, Andres Sevtsuk, Holly Samuelson
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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Preparation of Doctoral Thesis Proposal
Martin Bechthold, Ann Forsyth, Niall Kirkwood, Ali Malkawi, Erika Naginski, Antoine Picon, Peter Rowe
Independent Study with Doctoral Advisor to produce a preliminary literature review. Prerequisite: Enrollment in GSD DDes program. Prep of Thesis …
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Thesis in Satisfaction of Degree Doctor of Design
Diane Davis, K. Michael Hays, Alex Krieger, Ali Malkawi, Antoine Picon, Peter Rowe, Charles Waldheim
Thesis in Satisfaction of the degree Doctor of Design.
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Urban Design Proseminar
The proseminar is a forum for conversation on contemporary urban design. It is structured around three overlapping discussions: the formation of the discipline,…