Courses
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Second Semester Core Urban Planning Studio
Daniel D’Oca, Brie Hensold, Jennifer Molinsky, 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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Extreme Urbanism 6: Designing Sanitation Infrastructure
This studio examines the issue of sanitation infrastructure in Mumbai, with a special focus on community toilets in the city’s informal settlements. The site…
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Large Scale Projects to Create New Centralities in Shanghai. Potentials for the Regular City
The studio focuses on a study of capacity of big urbanistic projects to direct the growth and transformation of large metropolises. It takes the example…
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Designing Atmospheres and Technologies for Social Interaction
The knowledge economy has become the main engine of economic prosperity in urban areas. High-tech talent and industry have moved back to many cities, raising…
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Future of Streets in Los Angeles
The Future of Streets studio in Los Angeles will investigate the impact of new mobility technologies on the built environment of LA, seeking solutions that…
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Patterned Justice: Design Languages for a Just Pittsburgh
Christopher Alexander’s seminal 1977 book “A Pattern Language” describes that people designing their environments rely on certain "languages” that allow them to articulate and communicate…
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Re-thinking a Humanist Skyscraper City
As the birthplace of the modern Skyscraper, the city of Chicago holds a place in history as one of great architectural innovation. From the first…
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Interdisciplinary Art and Design Practices
The Interdisciplinary Art and Design Practices Seminar investigates art and design work in the interdisciplinary modalities of contemporary culture and the city. As artists and…
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Designing the American City: Civic Aspirations and Urban Form
The course is an interpretative look at the characteristic patterns of settlement and attitudes towards cities and urban life that are identified…
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Urban Form: Transition as Condition
The fixed categories by which we have traditionally understood the urban no longer hold. They have been undermined by the multiplicity of…
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Place-Based Design Inquiry
This workshop will critically and imaginatively engage design that is already embedded in the language of place—in maps, ecologies, histories, films, policies, plans, and everyday…
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Emergent Urbanizations: Challenges for Theory, Method, and Research
Neil Brenner, Sai Balakrishnan
This course proceeds from a simple premise: new patterns and pathways of urbanization are emerging around the world, and these transformations require a radical rethinking…
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Urban Grids: Open form for City Design-2
Framework: Within a larger research scope on “Revisiting the urban grids in the XXI century”, this seminar will focus on the investigation…
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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…
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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
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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Urban Politics and Planning (at HKS)
In the face of failures and dysfunction at the national level, there is growing excitement about the welfare- and democracy-enhancing potential of…
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Cities by Design II: Projects, Processes, and Outcomes
Cities are palimpsests. They are the spatial manifestations of a layering and re-layering of social and environmental systems over time. Cities by Design II is…
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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…
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Housing and Urbanization in Global Cities
The subject of Housing and Urbanization in Global Cities examines housing policy and planning in urban societies around the world and especially…
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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
How can one optimize the benefits of environmental or social sustainability while generating a higher return on investment in buildings? Where are…
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Planning for Climate Change: Scarcity, Abundance, and the Idea of the Future
Climate change presents a range of complex challenges for urban planning and design. This class will explore the conditions planners face in…
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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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Urban Transportation Planning and Implementation
Frederick Salvucci, Ruth Bonsignore
This course examines the policy, politics, planning, and implementation of transportation systems in urban areas. We will explore a broad range of…
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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 otherwise, we…
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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 field studies course will use a combination of readings, lectures, class discussion and a focused development exercise for a Boston site to explore…
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Demographics and Population Processes
Many of the important challenges that our communities face today, from the persistent racial and ethnic disparities and human rights violations, to…
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Urban Design for Planners
Course ObjectivesThis seminar course introduces physical planners to the approaches, techniques and tools of urban design necessary to structure the spatial…
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International Humanitarian Response (at HSPH)
This course offers practical training in the complex issues and field skills needed to engage in humanitarian work. Students will gain familiarity with the concepts…
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Creating Real Estate Ventures: a Legal Perspective
The course will examine how a commercial real estate deal is put together to move a project from conception to completion. The…
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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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Market Analysis and Urban Economics
This course focuses on the built environment and land-use policy. The course combines readings from the real estate economics academic literature with…
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Independent Study by Candidates for Master’s Degrees
Yusuke Obuchi, John May, Jerold S. Kayden, Joan Busquets, Niall Kirkwood, Steven Handel, Eric Howeler, Sawako Kaijima, Emily Wettstein, Stephen Gray, Danielle Choi, Teresa Gali Izard, John Peterson, Abby Spinak, Daniel D’Oca, Peter Rowe, Rosetta S. Elkin, Andres Sevtsuk, Rosalea Monacella, Jesse M. Keenan, Jennifer Molinsky, Ewa Harabasz, Tomás dePaor, Oana Stanescu, Mark Lee, K. Michael Hays, Rahul Mehrotra, Lily Song, Andrew Witt, Jennifer Bonner, Kayoko Ota, Antoine Picon, Jock Herron, Anita Berrizbeitia, Jon Lott, Remment Koolhaas, Martin Bechthold, Alice Friedman, Jose A. Gomez-Ibanez, Panagiotis Michalatos, Diane Davis, Richard Peiser, Ann Forsyth
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
Niall Kirkwood, Ali Malkawi, Ann Forsyth
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
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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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…