Courses
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Second Semester Core Urban Planning Studio
Ann Forsyth, Alex Krieger, Daniel D’Oca, Kathryn Madden, Robert Pietrusko
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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Retrofitting the (post?) Industrial Metropolis: Housing and Economic Growth in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area and the Bajío Region
Mexico’s national authorities are rethinking their housing policy frameworks, so as to connect questions of housing supply and affordability to location as well as to…
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Medellin: Urban Porosity as Social Infrastructure: A Multidisciplinary Hub for Change
This course explores the space that the architect-urban designer has in the contemporary world, and his/her role as an agent of/for social transformation through design.
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Obsolescence and Pathways to Redevelopment: The Shekou Industrial District in Shenzhen, China
A striking aspect of China’s recent modernization and urbanization has been a relatively high rate of obsolescence, variously pegged at around 30 years for many…
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Design and Politics – Managing Risks and Vulnerabilities
Contemporary spatial design faces a political paradox. To address emerging environmental challenges and the risk of climate-related disasters, it must transcend political boundaries to operate…
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Barcelona’s Grids: in Search of New Paradigms
FRAMEWORK. The construction of modern Barcelona can be seen as a laboratory of urban projects and planning strategies. This process spanning two centuries features…
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Digital Media for Design
The course will focus on the interrogation and acquisition of different emerging and established digital design approaches for designers. Students will gain knowledge of…
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Designing the American City: Civic Aspirations and Urban Form
This course takes an interpretive look at the American city in terms of changing attitudes toward urban life. City and suburb are experienced as the…
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Design Anthropology: Objects, Landscapes, Cities
In recent years, there has been a movement in anthropology toward a focus on objects, while design and planning have been moving toward the…
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The Subject and the City
This seminar takes as its premise that a history and theory of the city cannot be known without an accompanying history and theory…
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The Forms of Water: Aquatic Landscapes in South America
South America can be analyzed as an aquatic territory: the three major river basins (Orinoco, Amazonas and the Plata), ground waters as the Guaraní…
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Urban Grids: Score for Designing the City
Framework: Within a larger research scope on “Revisiting the urban grids in the XXI century”, this seminar will focus on the investigation of recent…
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Geo Architecture: A History and Theory for an Emerging Aesthetic
The course approaches architectural form through geographically inspired constructs. Drawing from physical and human geography, the proposed theory expands the setting of architecture from the…
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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 of…
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Urban Theory after 1968: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanism
This class elaborates some of the theoretical foundations for the ongoing research of the Urban Theory Lab on the contemporary “urban revolution”. Such an investigation…
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Critical Memory and the Experience of History
This seminar presents selected texts treating architecture as a foundational phenomena of being in the world (Hegel and Heidegger), as well as the…
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Case Studies in Critical Conservation: Strategies for Curating the Built Environment
This course analyzes case studies in conservation as a means for developing projective strategies for interpreting and curating buildings, landscapes, and cities. More specifically,…
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Public and Private Development
This course explores the analytic frameworks, skills, and bodies of knowledge required to understand, evaluate, plan, and implement public and private development within cities and…
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Markets and Market Failures
This course provides an introduction to how markets operate, the criteria for assessing their performance, and the circumstances under which they perform well or poorly.
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Cities by Design II
Rahul Mehrotra, Christine Smith, Ricky Burdett, Jana Cephas, Eve Blau, Peter Rowe, Jose Castillo, Erkin Ozay
The year-long ‘Cities by Design’ course is mandatory for all incoming Masters of Urban Design Students. All other students are welcome to enroll in…
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Field Studies in Real Estate, Planning, and Urban Design: East Chicago, IN and Malden, MA
The Field Study course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the dynamics and complexities of reality that create contemporary urban physical…
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Analytic Methods of Urban Planning: Quantitative
This course introduces students to quantitative analysis and research methods. The course begins with a discussion of how quantitative methods fit within the broader research…
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Analytic Methods: Qualitative
This module reviews the epistemologies of urban knowledge. How do planners and designers know what they know? We will discuss methods of field research in…
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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 five main…
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Building and Leading Real Estate Enterprises and Entrepreneurship
This course focusses on how you conceive, start, manage and lead successful real estate companies. By virtue of the industry in which they compete,…
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Transportation Policy and Planning (at KSG)
Provides an overview of the issues involved in transportation policy and planning, as well as an introduction to the skills necessary for solving…
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Urbanization and International Development
This course undertakes a detailed examination of global urbanization in the context of international development. The course is divided into four components. It…
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Housing and Urbanization in Global Cities
Alexander von Hoffman, Deidre Schmidt
This course analyzes housing policy and planning in developing urban societies around the world but especially in the Global South. Through slide presentations, lectures,…
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Critical and Social Cartography
How might we identify the practices of responsive/responsible social and critical cartography, amid the proliferation of digital spatial media? To address this question, this…
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Environment, Economics, and Enterprise
Holly Samuelson, Frank Apeseche
How can one optimize the benefits of environmental sustainability while generating a higher return on investment in buildings? Where are the opportunities for real…
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Global Leadership in Real Estate and Design
In today’s connected urban centers, shifts in cultural preferences, design thinking, and spatial significations often reflect and parallel transitions in capital forces and economic realities,…
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Urban Design for Planners
Course Objectives This seminar course introduces physical planners to the approaches, techniques and tools of urban design necessary to structure the spatial and…
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The Design of Real Estate
Building typologies are fundamental instruments for constructing urban patterns and spatial forms. In the discourse of modern architecture and urbanism, the study of building typologies…
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International Humanitarian Response I and II (at HSPH)
Stephanie Kayden, Peter Walker
GSD SES 05432 is the equivalent of GHP 515 and GHP 518. This course is the equivalent of 3 GSD units, not 4.
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Environmental Planning & Sustainable Development
The goal of this course is to provide an introduction to the ideas and information necessary to integrate environmental viability and sustainable development with other…
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Housing Policy in the United States: The Intersection of the Public and Private Sectors
In the 20th century, housing policy in the United States crafted a complex finance and delivery system that is the envy of the world.
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Real Estate in Frontier Markets (at HBS)
This course is offered as a 2 unit course in spring 2014. Jointly Listed at Harvard Business School as HBS 1462 Meets according to the…
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Affordable and Mixed-Income Housing Development, Finance, and Management
This “nuts and bolts” course focuses on the development, financing, and management of both rental and ownership affordable and mixed-income housing developments. The primary public…
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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…
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Smart[er] Cities
The vision of a Smart City is currently fostered by a technologically-enhanced worldview of the urban condition, whereas traditional and modern communication infrastructure,…
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Real-Time Cities: an Introduction to Urban Cybernetics
In real-time cities, urbanity merges with digital information so that the built environment is dynamically sensed and synchronously actuated to perform more efficiently, intelligently,…
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Design Competitions
Design competitions are increasingly used to procure design of, well, just about anything you can think of. In the world of built and landscape environments,…
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The Ephemeral City: Research Seminar on Temporal Urbanism
ADV-09129 /The Ephemeral City: Research Seminar on Temporal Urbanism Today, the scale and pace of contemporary urbanization challenges the notion of permanence as a…
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Urban Theory Lab, Project-Based Seminar: Extreme Territories of Urbanization
In the early 1970s, Henri Lefebvre anticipated a situation of \”generalized urbanization\” in which an \”urban fabric\” would be extended to encompass the entire planet.
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Cold Storage – An Interactive Documentary Project
Libraries are not mere repositories, but sites breeding strange hybrids of knowledge, people, and material things. Building on the strength of two years of…
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Independent Thesis in Satisfaction of the Degree MAUD, MLAUD, or MUP
Daniel D’Oca, Luis Callejas, Diane Davis, A. Hashim Sarkis, Alex Krieger, Peter Rowe, Joan Busquets, Eric Belsky, Jana Cephas, Michael Hooper
Following preparation in GSD 9204, each student pursues a topic of relevance to urban design or urban planning, which may include design or planning exploration,…
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Master of Design Studies Final Project
Jana Cephas, Yanni Loukissas, Erika Naginski, Joyce Klein-Rosenthal, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Susan Snyder, George Thomas
The Final Project will consist of a theoretical/position component, and of a practical/experimental component. The scope of each of the two components will be determined…
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Independent Study by Candidates for Doctoral Degrees
Erika Naginski, Susan Snyder, Neil Brenner
Under faculty guidance, the student conducts a reading program and formulates a thesis proposal. The course is intended for doctoral students.
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Discourse and Methods II
This is one of two seminars fulfilling a requirement for successful completion of the PHD curriculum. The seminar is designed as an introduction to canonical…