Selection of Distributional Electives
Students are required to select 12 units of courses from across disciplines.
Note that courses may not be offered every academic year.
Urban Planning & Design
VIS 2128 Spatial Analysis (please note this is a 2-unit course)
DES 3348 The Idea of Environment
DES 3534 Ephemeral Infrastructure
DES 3521 Moral Leadership: Ethics in Public Life
SES 5213 Equitable Development and Housing Policy in Urban Settings (at HKS)
SES 5215 Analytic Methods of Urban Planning (please note this is a 2-unit course)
SES 5347 Urbanization and Development
SES 5380 Experimental Infrastructures
SES 5381 Urban Design & the Color Line
SES 5386 Urban Ethnographies
SES 5409 Climate Justice
SES 5435 Land Policy and Planning for Equitable and Fiscally Healthy Communities
SES 5443 The (New) Image of the City
SES 5464 Do No Harm: Dilemmas in Planning for Health
SES 5511 Public Transit
SES 5513 Native Nations and Contemporary Land Use
SES 5518 Climate Migration
SES 5522 Rebuild: Case Studies in Transformational Urban Redevelopment
SES 5523 City Politics Field Lab (at HKS)
SES 5525 Design for Impact: Public Space and Policy in the Global South
SES 5526 Strategic Sustainability: Building Resilient and Responsible Enterprises
PRO 7459 Negotiating Actionable Plans and Policies
Landscape Architecture
VIS 2467 Images of the Environment: Terror and Beauty
DES 3241 Theories of Landscape as Urbanism
DES 3242 History, Theory, Culture IV: Theories and Practices of Landscape Architecture
DES 3396 Thinking Landscape – Making Cities
HIS 4455 Cotton Kingdom, Now
SES 5382 Making Participation Relevant to Design
SCI 6244 Climate by Design
Architecture
VIS 2314 Responsive Environments: Episodes in Experiential Futures
VIS 2472 Curatorial Practices in the Public Realm: Working Outside the Box
VIS 2484 Interdisciplinary Art and Design Practices
DES 3352 Type and the Idea of the City: Architecture’s Search for what is Common
HIS 4362 Structuring Urban Experience: From the Athenian Acropolis to the Boston Common
HIS 4374 Cities, Infrastructures, and Politics: From Renaissance to Smart Technologies
HIS 4395 Environmentalisms: How to have a Politics?
HIS 4423 The Shapes of Utopia
HIS 4519 Contested Spaces: Architecture and Power
HIS 4530 Transition as Condition: Urban Form and Environment
HIS 4531 Monuments, Monumentality, and Meaning
HIS 4532 Urban Fragments in the Americas
SCI 6505 Systems as Spaces of Care
SCI 6506 Design Analytics: Predicting Human Spatial Experience
MIT
MIT 11.422 Law, Technology, and Public Policy
MIT 4.S22 Change A System, Change the World
The objectives for core course selection should expose students to the following:
1. General concepts of governance and participation
2. General concepts of societal conflicts, crisis, contestations that effect the built and natural environment
3. Forms of practice that engage the publics
4. Varied forms of public domains
Students contemplating cross-registering for courses at another Harvard school must abide by the dates and policies of the school in which the course is offered. Priority for enrollment may be given to the other school’s students first before cross-registrations are accepted — enrollment is not guaranteed. See our Cross Registration Policies and Procedures.