Provides students with an introduction to public policy analysis. Examines various approaches to policy analysis by considering the concepts, tools, and methods used in economics, political science, and other disciplines. Students apply and critique these approaches through case studies of current public policy problems.

Real-world clients and environmental problems form the basis of a project in which teams of students develop strategies for analysis and implementation of new sensor technology within cities.  Working closely with a partner or client based on the MIT campus or in Cambridge, students assess the environmental problem, implement prototypes, and recommend promising solutions to the client for imple

Analyzes federal and state regulation of air and water pollution, hazardous waste, greenhouse gas emissions, and production/use of toxic chemicals. Analyzes pollution/climate change as economic problems and failure of markets. Explores the role of science and economics in legal decisions.

Introduces students to basic principles of US law and legal analysis, focused on property, land use, equal protection, civil rights, fair housing, and local government law, in order to explore who should control how land is used and how.

Immerses students in the process of building and testing their own digital and board games in order to better understand how we learn from games. Explores the design and use of games in the classroom in addition to research and development issues associated with computer-based (desktop and handheld) and non-computer-based media.

Studies financing tools and program models to support and promote local economic development and housing. Overview of public and private capital markets and financing sources helps illustrate market imperfections that constrain economic and housing development and increase race and class disparaties.

Introduces students to the social, political, and ethical aspects of data science work. Designed to create reflective practitioners who are able to think critically about how collecting, aggregating, and analyzing data are social processes and processes that affect people.

Examines how Indigenous peoples' relationships to their homelands and local environments has been adversely affected by Western planning.

Builds on 11.200 by exploring in more detail contemporary planning tools and techniques, as well as case studies of planning and urban studies practice.

Students develop a suite of tools from economic theory to understand the mutual processes of individual action and structural constraint. Students apply these tools to human interaction and social decision-making. Builds an understanding of producer theory from the collaborative possibilities and physical constraints that unfold as production is scaled up.

This course provides an introductory overview of qualitative research methods as a field of intellectual enquiry and practice for planners. Students will learn about the theoretical underpinnings of qualitative research methods with emphasis on understanding how qualitative methods fit in the oeuvre of research methods more generally.

Students work in entrepreneurial teams to advance innovative ideas, products, services, and firms oriented to design and the built environment. Lectures, demonstrations, and presentations are supplemented by workshop time, when teams interact individually with instructors and industry mentors, and by additional networking events and field trips.

Immerses students in the process of building and testing their own digital and board games in order to better understand how we learn from games. Explores the design and use of games in the classroom in addition to research and development issues associated with computer-based (desktop and handheld) and non-computer-based media.

Examines different aspects of the growth of China, which has the second largest economy in the world. Studies the main drivers of Chinese economic growth and the forces behind the largest urbanization in human history.

Examines how Indigenous peoples' relationships to their homelands and local environments has been adversely affected by Western planning.

Core skills for real estate development, design, and planning are shifting to encompass analytics in data science and machine learning. Introduces the principles of data science and machine learning that are impacting the domain of real estate today.

Investigates the interaction between pedestrian activity, urban form, and land-use patterns in relatively dense urban environments. Informed by recent literature on pedestrian mobility, behavior, and biases, subject takes a practical approach, using software tools and analysis methods to operationalize and model pedestrian activity.

Examines the complex development of cities through history by tracing a diachronic accumulation of forms and spaces in specific cities, and showing how significant ideas were made manifest across distinct geographies and cultures. Emphasizes how economic, spiritual, political, geographic and technological forces have simultaneously shaped and, in turn, been influenced by the city. 

Offers insight into tension and synergy between sustainability and the real estate industry. Considers why sustainability matters for real estate, how real estate can contribute to sustainability and remain profitable, and what investment and market opportunities exist for sustainable real estate products and how they vary across asset classes.

Designed to help students deepen their understanding of leadership and increase self-awareness. They reflect on their authentic leadership styles and create goals and a learning plan to develop their capabilities. They also participate in activities to strengthen their "leadership presence" - the ability to authentically connect with people's hearts and minds.

Provides an overview of affordable and mixed-income housing development for students who wish to understand the fundamental issues and requirements of urban scale housing development, and the process of planning, financing and developing such housing. Students gain practical experience assembling a mixed-income housing development proposal.

Examines dynamic relationship among key actors: beneficiaries, government, and funder. Emphasis on cost recovery, affordability, replicability, user selection, and project administration. Extensive case examples provide basis for comparisons. In person not required.

Explores the spatialization of conflict and peace from perspectives within the humanities and social sciences.

Seminar provides students with a concise overview of the requirements for thesis writing and submission. Covers types of theses, COUHES requirements, formatting and submission requirements and stipulations. Culminates in submission of thesis proposal.

Analyzes federal and state regulation of air and water pollution, hazardous waste, greenhouse gas emissions, and production/use of toxic chemicals. Analyzes pollution/climate change as economic problems and failure of markets. Explores the role of science and economics in legal decisions.

Required subject intended solely for 1st-year DUSP PhD students. Develops capacity of doctoral students to become independent scholars by helping them to prepare their first-year papers and plan for their dissertation work. Focuses on the process by which theory, research questions, literature reviews, and new data are synthesized into new and original contributions to the literature.

Familiarizes students with the practice of planning, by requiring actual experience in professional internship placements. Enables students to both apply what they are learning in their classes in an actual professional setting and to reflect, using a variety of platforms, on the learning -- personal and professional -- growing out of their internship experience.

Description

How do we design places that reflect and elicit joy? How about places that allow us to acknowledge or express grief? We will examine the role of care in architecture and design and how it finds expression through joy and grief as expressed by interventions in public space. We will look at memorials, playgrounds, parks, promenades, and a variety of places of gathering and solitude.

This course will introduce the students to four strands of research regarding the urban informal economy in developing nations. First, it will provide an overview of the literature on cites and urban informal economy dating back to 1950. This overview will help students to learn the various theoretical approaches to the understanding of the urban informal economy: What is it?

What is planning? Who or what institutions have had the formal capacity to ‘plan’ in the modernist, rationalist sense of the term? What does it mean to ascribe to planning a racial, ethnic, or national descriptor, such as “Black”?

Since their emergence around 10,000 years ago, cities have evolved into the most magnificent and consequential artifacts in human history. Today, big data and new computational methods and tools are empowering us to study these forces quantitively for the first time in history.

Program of research and writing of thesis; to be arranged by the student with supervising committee.