City Design and Development

Connecting the physical transformation of large-scale areas in cities through the shaping the form of buildings, public spaces and infrastructure, as well as understanding the institutions and mechanisms that affect form, and how to implement physical change in the city. Through urban design course material, students will also engage with the theory and history of city form and design, including patterns of settlement, the imaging of urban environments, and relationships between politics and the form of cities, as well as the design of new urban tissue.
The department offers several opportunities for students to practice and incorporate urban design into their MCP curriculum. Every year, the Urban Planning and Architecture departments offer a joint studio elective course open to students from both programs. Every two years, dating back to 1985, the Urban Planning department offers a studio in collaboration with Tsinghua University in Beijing. This studio takes students to China to work alongside Tsinghua graduate students on a modern urban design challenge. In addition to these studio opportunities, MCP students are also offered a studio course as an option to fulfill their practicum, or client-based work, course requirement.

Concentrated on the planning of communities at a local and regional scale, including understanding natural systems, transportation options, the regulatory framework that controls land use, and the impacts and management of growth. 
 

Engages with both the redevelopment of public housing projects in the United States and abroad, as well as improving the quality and efficiency of residential development. Investigates the livability of existing housing being built, retrofitting existing development and the development of new models for community design. 

Linked with the MIT Center for Real Estate, integrates the design and implementation of development projects, the economics and finance of real estate, and management of the development process.

Analyzes the impact of the built environment on the natural environment while seeking means for coevolution between these realms. Ecological urbanism applies this understanding to design strategic solutions to pressing environmental and social challenges—including climate change, renewable energy siting, water conservation, landscape toxicity, deindustrialization, environmental justice, adaptive reuse and the design of cultural landscapes.

Critically examines the social implications of built and natural forms, land use structures, and demographic patterns using data and computational techniques.  The use of spatial analysis, computational modeling, statistics, and data visualization provides urban planners, architects, and designers critical technologies and methods to understand  how the complex forces shaping built environments change over time, respond to planned interventions, and desirably lead towards more equitable and resilient outcomes.

Climate change is the defining challenge of our times, and cities are at the two extremes of climate change: urban activities are causing a warming planet, and at the same time, the structures and systems of cities embody the greatest potential for curbing human energy consumption and emissions. How fast we decarbonize the planet depends on how we and future generations will live in, move through, use and develop in cities. How can city design and planning offer solutions to adapt and mitigate the impacts of global warming?

For nearly 40 years, MIT’s City Design and Development program has collaborated with China’s Tsinghua University to convene planning and architecture students and faculty from both universities around a joint urban design studio. Established in 1985 and occurring every two years, this joint studio stands as one of the longest running academic engagements between the United States and China. Through a combination of site visits, stakeholder presentations, workshops, and design work, participants collaborate on critical urban design questions and explore built-environment challenges at both the local and national scales in China. In its most recent years, the program addressed adaptive reuse of industrial sites, highlighting questions of sustainable transitions in light of economic restructuring of Chinese cities. 

The most recent 2024 China Urban Design workshop focused on envisioning planning and design strategies for decommissioned state-owned pottery factories in Tangshan (see the 2024 workshop report here). More information on recent joint studio projects can be found in studio and workshop reports below.