Subjects

Examines how the struggle among competing advocates shapes the outputs of government. Considers how conditions become problems for government to solve, why some political arguments are more persuasive than others, why some policy tools are preferred over others, and whether policies achieve their goals. Investigates the interactions among elected officials, think tanks, interest groups, the media, and the public in controversies over global warming, urban sprawl, Social Security, health care, education, and other issues. 

Explores the evolution of poverty and economic security in the US within a global context. Examines the impacts of recent economic restructuring and globalization. Reviews current debates about the fate of the middle class, sources of increasing inequality, and approaches to advancing economic opportunity and security. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

A weekly seminar that includes discussions on topics in cities and urban planning, including guest lectures from DUSP faculty and practicing planners.  Topics include urban science, zoning, architecture and urban design, urban sociology, politics and public policy, transportation and mobility, democratic governance, civil rights and social justice, urban economics, affordable housing, environmental policy and planning, real estate and economic development, agriculture and food policy, public health, and international development.  Weekly student presentations on local planning issues and current events; occasional walking tours or arranged field trips.

Preference given to Course 11 and 11-6 sophomores and juniors.

Introduction to negotiation theory and practice. Applications in government, business, and nonprofit settings are examined. Combines a "hands-on" personal skill-building orientation with a look at pertinent tactical and strategic foundations. Preparation insights, persuasion tools, ethical benchmarks, and institutional influences are examined as they shape our ability to analyze problems, negotiate agreements, and resolve disputes in social, organizational, and political circumstances characterized by interdependent interests. Enrollment limited by lottery; consult class website for information and deadlines. 

Issues in international development, appropriate technology and project implementation addressed through lectures, case studies, guest speakers and laboratory exercises. Students form project teams to partner with community organizations in developing countries, and formulate plans for an optional IAP site visit. (Previous field sites include Ghana, Brazil, Honduras and India.) Recitation sections focus on specific project implementation, and include cultural, social, political, environmental and economic overviews of the target countries as well as an introduction to the local languages. Enrollment limited by lottery; must attend first class session. 

This course is designed for students who aspire to shape the future of mobility. The course explores technological, behavioral, policy and systems-wide frameworks for innovation in transportation systems, complemented with case studies across the mobility spectrum, from autonomous vehicles to urban air mobility to last-mile sidewalk robots. Students will interact with a series of guest lecturers from CEOs and other business and government executives who are actively reshaping the future of mobility. Interdisciplinary teams of students will work to deliver business plans for startups or action plans for solving “real world” challenges in established companies, governments or NGOs.

Provides a critical introduction to the shape and determinants of political, social, and economic inequality in America, with a focus on racial and economic justice. Explores the role of the city in visions of justice. Analyzes the historical, political, and institutional contexts of housing and community development policy in the US, including federalism, municipal fragmentation, and decentralized public financing. Introduces major dimensions in US housing policy, such as housing finance, public housing policy, and state and local housing affordability mechanisms. Reviews major themes in community economic development, including drivers of economic inequality, small business policy, employment policy, and cooperative economics. Expectations and evaluation criteria differ for students taking graduate version. 

Provides an opportunity for MIT students to become certified in methods of assessing the vulnerability of public agencies (particularly agencies that manage critical urban infrastructure) to the risk of cyberattack. Certification involves completing an 8-hour, self-paced, online set of four modules during the first four weeks of the semester followed by a competency exam. Students who successfully complete the exam become certified. The certified students work in teams with client agencies in various cities around the United States. Through preparatory interactions with the agencies, and short on-site visits, teams prepare vulnerability assessments that client agencies can use to secure the technical assistance and financial support they need to manage the risks of cyberattack they are facing. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

Presents methods for resolving facility siting disputes, particularly those involving renewable energy. After completing four modules and a competency exam for MITx certification, students work in teams to help client communities in various cities around the United States. Through direct interactions with the proponents and opponents of facilities subject to local opposition, students complete a stakeholder assessment and offer joint fact-finding and collaborative problem-solving assistance. The political, legal, financial, and regulatory aspects of facility siting, particularly for renewable energy, are reviewed along with key infrastructure planning principles. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments.

This course engages economic development planning to understand and address historical economic exclusion and institutional oppression. Begins with 20th-century history and the origins of poverty first to enable students to understand why we must explicitly undertake actions to steer economic development purposefully. The task is to deploy the conventional tools of economic development planning to privilege steps leading to identifying and reducing inequality. This class includes core tools and techniques in economic development planning. Assignments will engage in data collection, analysis, and presentation, emphasizing underrepresented populations. We intend to expose inequities and consider actions that build healthy communities traditionally excluded from mainstream economic opportunities. We couple skills with interpretive intuitions to enable students to master the use of conventional tools and learn to apply them appropriately in specific settings. These are aggregated into a final report and include the tools developed over the semester. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

Building on the skills and strategies honed in 11.011, explores advanced negotiation practice. Emphasizes an experiential skill-building approach, underpinned by cutting-edge cases and innovative research. Examines applications in high-stakes management, public policy, social entrepreneurship, international diplomacy, and scientific discovery. Strengthens collaborative decision-making, persuasion, and leadership skills by negotiating across different media and through personalized coaching, enhancing students' ability to proactively engage stakeholders, transform organizations, and inspire communities.

Enrollment limited by lottery; consult class website for information and deadlines.

Examines how law, economics, and technological change shape public policy, and how law can sway technological change; how the legal system responds to environmental, safety, energy, social, and ethical problems; how law and markets interact to influence technological development; and how law can affect wealth distribution, employment, and social justice. Covers energy/climate change; genetic engineering; telecommunications and role of misinformation; industrial automation; effect of regulation on technological innovation; impacts of intellectual property law on innovation and equity; pharmaceuticals; nanotechnology; cost/benefit analysis as a decision tool; public participation in governmental decisions affecting science and technology; corporate influence on technology and welfare; and law and economics as competing paradigms to encourage sustainability. Students taking graduate version explore subject in greater depth. 

One of two introductory subjects on teaching and learning science and mathematics in a variety of K-12 settings. Topics include education and media, education reform, the history of education, simulations, games, and the digital divide. Students gain practical experience through weekly visits to schools, classroom discussions, selected readings, and activities to develop a critical and broad understanding of past and current forces that shape the goals and processes of education, and explores the challenges and opportunities of teaching. Students work collaboratively and individually on papers, projects, and in-class presentations.

Concentrates on core set of skills and knowledge necessary for teaching in secondary schools. Topics include classroom management, student behavior and motivation, curriculum design, educational reform, and the teaching profession. Classroom observation is a key component. Assignments include readings from educational literature, written reflections on classroom observations, practice teaching and constructing curriculum. The first of the three-course sequence necessary to complete the Teacher Education Program.

Investigates the use of social medial and digital technologies for planning and advocacy by working with actual planning and advocacy organizations to develop, implement, and evaluate prototype digital tools. Students use the development of their digital tools as a way to investigate new media technologies that can be used for planning. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

This course focuses on developing realistic pathways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from urban passenger transportation. It reviews the strategies most commonly proposed to advance climate change mitigation: changing urban land use patterns, shifting passenger travel behavior to less energy intensive modes, adopting zero emission vehicle technology, and developing ‘new mobility’ such as carshare, bikeshare, and rideshare. Each of these strategies is evaluated quantitatively to understand its potential to support pathways to zero emission mobility. Students then consider the policy tools required to unlock these changes, and the potential for private investment to support this transition. The course closes with modules on climate adaptation in urban transportation and a comparison to decarbonization in ‘harder to decarbonize’ areas like airlines and long distance freight transport. It seeks to enable students to be intelligent evaluators of approaches to transportation decarbonization and equip them with the tools to develop and evaluate policy measures relevant to their local professional challenges. 

Examines the behavioral foundation for policy design using urban transportation examples. Introduces multiple frameworks for understanding behavior while contrasting the perspectives of classic economic theory with behavioral economics and social psychology. Suggests corresponding policy interventions and establishes a mapping across behavior, theory, and policy. Presents a spectrum of instruments for positively influencing behavior and improving welfare. Challenges students to critique, design, implement and interpret experiments that nudge travel behavior. Brings behavioral insights to creative design of transport policies that are efficient and equitable as well as simple, consistent, transparent, acceptable, and adaptive to behavioral changes. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

Combines online weekly face-to-face negotiation exercises and in-person lectures designed to empower budding entrepreneurs with negotiation techniques to protect and increase the value of their ideas, deal with ego and build trust in relationships, and navigate entrepreneurial bargaining under constraints of economic uncertainty and complex technical considerations. Students must complete scheduled weekly assignments, including feedback memos to counterpart negotiators, and meet on campus with the instructor to discuss and reflect on their experiences with the course. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

Examines efforts in developing and advanced nations and regions. Examines key issues in the current and future development of urban energy systems, such as technology, use, behavior, regulation, climate change, and lack of access or energy poverty. Case studies on a diverse sampling of cities explore how prospective technologies and policies can be implemented. Includes intensive group research projects, discussion, and debate.

In this team-oriented, project-based subject, students work to find technical solutions that could be implemented to mitigate the effects of natural hazards related to climate change, bearing in mind that any proposed measures must be appropriate in a given region's socio-political-economic context. Students are introduced to a variety of natural hazards and possible mitigation approaches as well as principles of design, including adaptable design and design for failure. Students select the problems they want to solve and develop their projects. During the term, officials and practicing engineers of Cambridge, Boston, Puerto Rico, and MIT Facilities describe their approaches. Student projects are documented in a written report and oral presentation. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

An introduction to Geographic Information Systems (GIS), a tool for visualizing and analyzing spatial data. Explores how GIS can make maps, guide decisions, answer questions, and advocate for change. Class builds toward a project in which students critically apply GIS techniques to an area of interest. Students build data discovery, cartography, and spatial analysis skills while learning to reflect on their positionality within the research design process. Because maps and data are never neutral, the class incorporates discussions of power, ethics, and data throughout as part of a reflective practice. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication provided.

Introduces the theory and practice of planning and urban studies through exploration of the history of the field, case studies, and criticisms of traditional practice.

Students use economic theory tools acquired in 11.203 to understand the mutual processes of individual action and structural constraint and investigate crises in search of opportunities for mitigation and reparation. Investigates a variety of structural crises from throughout the realms of planning, such as: capitalism, climate change, and (in)action; white supremacy, segregation, and gentrification; colonialism, informality, and infrastructure; autocentricity and other legacies of the built environment.

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. Presents consumer theory as the process of individuals doing the best for themselves, their families, and their communities -- subject to the sociostructural constraints under which they operate. Considers alternative frameworks of social welfare, with a specific focus on marginalization and crisis, as well as common policy interventions and their implications under different constructions of welfare.

An introduction to Geographic Information Systems (GIS): a tool for visualizing and analyzing data representing locations and their attributes. GIS is invaluable for planners, scholars, and professionals who shape cities and a political instrument with which activists advocate for change. Class includes exercises to make maps, query databases, and analyze spatial data. Because maps and data are never neutral, the class incorporates discussions of power, ethics, and data throughout as part of a reflective practice.

Explores the evolution of poverty and economic security in the US within a global context. Examines the impacts of recent economic restructuring and globalization. Reviews current debates about the fate of the middle class, sources of increasing inequality, and approaches to advancing economic opportunity and security. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

Develops skills in research design for policy analysis and planning. Emphasizes the logic of the research process and its constituent elements. Topics include philosophy of science, question formulation, hypothesis generation and theory construction, data collection techniques (e.g. experimental, survey, interview), ethical issues in research, and research proposal preparation. 

Introduces students to participatory action research (PAR), an approach to research and inquiry that enables communities to examine and address consequential societal problems. Explores theoretical and practical questions at the heart of partnerships between applied social scientists and community partners. Focus includes the history of PAR and action research; debates regarding PAR as a form of applied social science; and practical, political, and ethical questions in the practice of PAR. Guides students through an iterative process for developing their own personal theories of practice. Covers co-designing and co-conducting research with community partners at various stages of the research process; examination of actual cases in which PAR-like methods have been used with greater or lesser success; and interaction with community members, organizations, and individuals who have been involved in PAR collaborations.

Seminar dissects ten transportation studies from head to toe to illustrate how research ideas are initiated, framed, analyzed, evidenced, written, presented, criticized, revised, extended, and published, quoted and applied. Students design and execute their own transportation research.

Enrollment limited and permission required from the instructor. If interested, please email Prof. Jinhua Zhao (jinhua@mit.edu) your CV and a brief description of your research interest and motivation to join the class

Survey of the latest transportation research offered by 12 MIT faculty each presenting their ongoing research. Students are required to attend the classes, read the assigned articles, and write a brief reflection memo.  

Combines online weekly face-to-face negotiation exercises and in-person lectures designed to empower budding entrepreneurs with negotiation techniques to protect and increase the value of their ideas, deal with ego and build trust in relationships, and navigate entrepreneurial bargaining under constraints of economic uncertainty and complex technical considerations. Students must complete scheduled weekly assignments, including feedback memos to counterpart negotiators, and meet on campus with the instructor to discuss and reflect on their experiences with the course. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

In this team-oriented, project-based subject, students work to find technical solutions that could be implemented to mitigate the effects of natural hazards related to climate change, bearing in mind that any proposed measures must be appropriate in a given region's socio-political-economic context. Students are introduced to a variety of natural hazards and possible mitigation approaches as well as principles of design, including adaptable design and design for failure. Students select the problems they want to solve and develop their projects. During the term, officials and practicing engineers of Cambridge, Boston, Puerto Rico, and MIT Facilities describe their approaches. Student projects are documented in a written report and oral presentation. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

Provides an opportunity for MIT students to become certified in methods of assessing the vulnerability of public agencies (particularly agencies that manage critical urban infrastructure) to the risk of cyberattack. Certification involves completing an 8-hour, self-paced, online set of four modules during the first four weeks of the semester followed by a competency exam. Students who successfully complete the exam become certified. The certified students work in teams with client agencies in various cities around the United States. Through preparatory interactions with the agencies, and short on-site visits, teams prepare vulnerability assessments that client agencies can use to secure the technical assistance and financial support they need to manage the risks of cyberattack they are facing. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

Seminar studies how the messy and complex forces of politics, planning and the real estate market have collectively shaped Boston's urban fabric and skyline in the last two decades. Using some of the city's most important real estate development proposals as case studies, students dissect and analyze Boston's negotiated development review and permitting process to understand what it takes beyond a great development concept and a sound financial pro forma to earn community and political support. Throughout the term, students identify strategies for success and pitfalls for failure within this intricate approval process, as well as how these lessons can be generalized and applied to other cities and real estate markets.

Seeks to examine the technological change and innovation that is disrupting the foundation of how we create the built environment. Through a series of educational workshops, students scout, catalog, and track technologies by looking at new real estate uses, products, processes, and organizational strategies at MIT labs and around the globe. Participants contribute to an interactive web tool, "The Tech Tracker," which provides technology intelligence to students and real estate professionals to enhance their understanding of technological progress. 

Introduces methods for observing, interpreting, and representing the urban environment. Students draw on their senses and develop their ability to deduce, question, and test conclusions about how the built environment is designed, used, and valued. The interrelationship of built form, circulation networks, open space, and natural systems are a key focus. Supplements existing classes that cover theory and history of city design and urban planning and prepares students without design backgrounds with the fundamentals of physical planning. Intended as a foundation for 11.329.

Through a studio-based course in planning and urban design, builds on the foundation acquired in 11.328 to engage in creative exploration of how design contributes to resilient, just, and vibrant urban places. Through the planning and design of two projects, students creatively explore spatial ideas and utilize various digital techniques to communicate their design concepts, giving form to strategic thinking. Develops approaches and techniques to evaluate the plural structure of the built environment and offer propositions that address policies and regulations as well as the values, behaviors, and wishes of the different users.

The design of urban environments. Strategies for change in large areas of cities, to be developed over time, involving different actors. Fitting forms into natural, man-made, historical, and cultural contexts; enabling desirable activity patterns; conceptualizing built form; providing infrastructure and service systems; guiding the sensory character of development. Involves architecture and planning students in joint work; requires individual designs or design and planning guidelines.

Introduction to entrepreneurship and how it shapes the world we live in. Through experiential learning in a workshop setting, students start to develop entrepreneurial mindset and skills. Through a series of workshops, student are introduced to the concept of Venture Design to create new venture proposals for the built environment as a method to understand the role of the entrepreneur in the fields of design, planning, real estate, and other related industries.

Focuses on key business and legal issues within the principal agreements used to control, entitle, capitalize, and construct a mixed-use real estate development. Through the lens of the real estate developer and its counter-parties, students identify, discuss, and negotiate the most important business issues in right of entry, purchase and sale, development, and joint-venture agreements, as well as a construction contract and construction loan agreement. Students work closely with attorneys who specialize in the construction of such agreements and with students from area law schools and Columbia University and New York University. Enrollment limited to approximately 25; preference to MSRED students. No listeners. 

Seminar, workshops, and fieldwork on strategies to use municipal land use regulations to shape urban growth and equity. Practicum workshop builds skills in civic engagement, policy-relevant research, zoning regulations, and physical design and planning. The workshop begins with implementation of qualitative and quantitative research into the existing built environment, social, economic, and political context. It continues with the planning, design, and implementation of community engagement strategies to shape goals and vision for the projects. The practicum then explores land use scenarios, design and innovative zoning and regulatory techniques, to improve equity in the areas of housing, environment, economic development, mobility, and the public realm. Projects arranged with small teams serving municipal clients experiencing pressures of urban growth and change in Massachusetts. Preference to MCP second year students.

Assessment of current and potential future energy systems. Covers resources, extraction, conversion, and end-use technologies, with emphasis on meeting 21st-century regional and global energy needs in a sustainable manner. Examines various energy technologies in each fuel cycle stage for fossil (oil, gas, synthetic), nuclear (fission and fusion) and renewable (solar, biomass, wind, hydro, and geothermal) energy types, along with storage, transmission, and conservation issues. Emphasizes analysis of energy propositions within an engineering, economic and social context.

Examines the role of science in US and international environmental policymaking. Surveys the methods by which scientists learn about the natural world; the treatment of science by experts, advocates, the media, and the public and the way science is used in legislative, administrative and judicial decision making. Through lectures, group discussions, and written essays, students develop a critical understanding of the role of science in environmental policy. Potential case studies include fisheries management, ozone depletion, global warming, smog, and endangered species.

Provides a critical introduction to the shape and determinants of political, social, and economic inequality in America, with a focus on racial and economic justice. Explores the role of the city in visions of justice. Analyzes the historical, political, and institutional contexts of housing and community development policy in the US, including federalism, municipal fragmentation, and decentralized public financing. Introduces major dimensions in US housing policy, such as housing finance, public housing policy, and state and local housing affordability mechanisms. Reviews major themes in community economic development, including drivers of economic inequality, small business policy, employment policy, and cooperative economics. Expectations and evaluation criteria differ for students taking graduate version. 

Introduces tools and techniques in economic development planning. Extensive use of data collection, analysis, and display techniques. Students build interpretive intuition skills through user experience design activities and develop a series of memos summarizing the results of their data analysis. These are aggregated into a final report, and include the tools developed over the semester. Students taking graduate version complete modified assignments focused on developing computer applications. 

Investigates the relationship between states and markets in the evolution of modern capitalism. Critically assesses the rise of what Karl Polanyi and Albert Hirschman have referred to as "market society:" a powerful conceptual framework that views the development of modern capitalism not as an outcome of deterministic economic and technological forces, but rather as the result of contingent social and political processes. Exposes students to a range of conceptual tools and analytic frameworks through which to understand the politics of economic governance and to consider the extent to which societal actors can challenge its limits and imagine alternative possibilities. Sub-themes vary from year to year and have focused on racial capitalism, markets and morality, urban futures, and the global financial crisis.

Examines how law, economics, and technological change shape public policy, and how law can sway technological change; how the legal system responds to environmental, safety, energy, social, and ethical problems; how law and markets interact to influence technological development; and how law can affect wealth distribution, employment, and social justice. Covers energy/climate change; genetic engineering; telecommunications and the role of misinformation; industrial automation; effect of regulation on technological innovation; impacts of intellectual property law on innovation and equity; pharmaceuticals; nanotechnology; cost/benefit analysis as a decision tool; public participation in governmental decisions affecting science and technology; corporate influence on technology and welfare; and law and economics as competing paradigms to encourage sustainability. Students taking graduate version explore subject in greater depth. 

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. Students converse with classmates and industry leaders to learn from their insights, experiences, and advice.

Concepts and techniques for analyzing financial decisions in commercial property development and investment. Topics include property income streams, urban economics, discounted cash flow, equity valuation, leverage and income tax considerations, development projects, and joint ventures.

Develops an understanding of the fundamental economic factors that shape the market for real property, as well as the influence of capital markets in asset pricing. Analyzes of housing as well as commercial real estate. Covers demographic analysis, regional growth, construction cycles, urban land markets, and location theory as well as recent technology impacts. Exercises and modeling techniques for measuring and predicting property demand, supply, vacancy, rents, and prices.

This course focuses on developing realistic pathways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from urban passenger transportation. It reviews the strategies most commonly proposed to advance climate change mitigation: changing urban land use patterns, shifting passenger travel behavior to less energy intensive modes, adopting zero emission vehicle technology, and developing ‘new mobility’ such as carshare, bikeshare, and rideshare. Each of these strategies is evaluated quantitatively to understand its potential to support pathways to zero emission mobility. Students then consider the policy tools required to unlock these changes, and the potential for private investment to support this transition. The course closes with modules on climate adaptation in urban transportation and a comparison to decarbonization in ‘harder to decarbonize’ areas like airlines and long distance freight transport. It seeks to enable students to be intelligent evaluators of approaches to transportation decarbonization and equip them with the tools to develop and evaluate policy measures relevant to their local professional challenges. 

Provides students with a concise overview of the range of building systems that are encountered in professional commercial real estate development practice in the USA. Focuses on the relationship between real estate product types, building systems, and the factors that real estate development professionals must consider when evaluating these products and systems for a specific development project. Surveys commercial building technology including Foundation, Structural, MEP/FP, Envelope, and Interiors systems and analyzes the factors that lead development professionals to select specific systems for specific product types. One or more field trips to active construction sites may be scheduled during non-class hours based on student availability. 

Investigates the use of social medial and digital technologies for planning and advocacy by working with actual planning and advocacy organizations to develop, implement, and evaluate prototype digital tools. Students use the development of their digital tools as a way to investigate new media technologies that can be used for planning. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

Investigates sustainable development, taking a broad view to include not only a healthy economic base, but also a sound environment, stable employment, adequate purchasing power, distributional equity, national self-reliance, and maintenance of cultural integrity. Explores national, multinational, and international political and legal mechanisms to further sustainable development through transformation of the industrial state. Addresses the importance of technological innovation and the financial crisis of 2008.

Issues in international development, appropriate technology and project implementation addressed through lectures, case studies, guest speakers and laboratory exercises. Students form project teams to partner with community organizations in developing countries, and formulate plans for an optional IAP site visit. (Previous field sites include Ghana, Brazil, Honduras and India.) Recitation sections focus on specific project implementation, and include cultural, social, political, environmental and economic overviews of the target countries as well as an introduction to the local languages. Enrollment limited by lottery; must attend first class session. 

Examines the behavioral foundation for policy design using urban transportation examples. Introduces multiple frameworks for understanding behavior while contrasting the perspectives of classic economic theory with behavioral economics and social psychology. Suggests corresponding policy interventions and establishes a mapping across behavior, theory, and policy. Presents a spectrum of instruments for positively influencing behavior and improving welfare. Challenges students to critique, design, implement and interpret experiments that nudge travel behavior. Brings behavioral insights to creative design of transport policies that are efficient and equitable as well as simple, consistent, transparent, acceptable, and adaptive to behavioral changes. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

Guides students in examining implicit and explicit values of diversity offered in "Southern" knowledge bases, theories, and practices of urban production. With a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa, considers why the South-centered location of the estimated global urban population boom obligates us to examine how cities work as they do, and why Western-informed urban theory and planning scholarship may be ill-suited to provide guidance on urban development there. Examines the "rise of the rest" and its implications for the making and remaking of expertise and norms in planning practice. Students engage with seminal texts from leading authors of Southern urbanism and critical themes, including the rise of Southern theory, African urbanism, Chinese international cooperation, Brazilian urban diplomacy, and the globally-driven commodification of urban real estate.

Includes spatial analysis exercises using real-world data sets, building toward an independent project in which students critically apply GIS techniques to an area of interest. Students build data discovery, cartography, and spatial analysis skills while learning to reflect on power and positionality within the research design process. Tailored to GIS applications within planning and design and emphasizes the role of reflective practice in GIS.

Develops technical skills necessary to design, build, and interact with spatial databases using the Structured Query Language (SQL) and its spatial extensions. Provides instruction in writing highly contextual metadata (data biographies). Prepares students to perform database maintenance, modeling, and digitizing tasks, and to critically evaluate and document data sources. Databases are implemented in PostgreSQL and PostGIS; students interface with these using QGIS.

Provides instruction in statistical approaches for analyzing interrelation, clustering, and interdependence, which are often key to understanding urban environments. Covers local and global spatial autocorrelation, interpolation, and kernel density methods; cluster detection; and spatial regression models. Develops technical skills necessary to ask spatial questions using inferential statistics implemented in the R statistical computing language. Prior coursework or experience in geographic information systems (GIS) at the introductory level required; prior coursework or experience in R is preferred.

This course is designed for students who aspire to shape the future of mobility. The course explores technological, behavioral, policy and systems-wide frameworks for innovation in transportation systems, complemented with case studies across the mobility spectrum, from autonomous vehicles to urban air mobility to last-mile sidewalk robots. Students will interact with a series of guest lecturers from CEOs and other business and government executives who are actively reshaping the future of mobility. Interdisciplinary teams of students will work to deliver business plans for startups or action plans for solving “real world” challenges in established companies, governments or NGOs.

Examines transportation policymaking and planning, its relationship to social and environmental justice and the influences of politics, governance structures and human and institutional behavior. Explores the pathway to infrastructure, how attitudes are influenced, and how change happens. Examines the tensions and potential synergies among traditional transportation policy values of individual mobility, system efficiency and “sustainability”. Explores the roles of the government; analysis of current trends; transport sector decarbonization; land use, placemaking, and sustainable mobility networks; the role of “mobility as a service”, and the implications of disruptive technology on personal mobility. Assesses traditional planning methods with a critical eye, and through that process consider how to approach transportation planning in a way that responds to contemporary needs and values, with an emphasis on transport justice.

Presents methods for resolving facility siting disputes, particularly those involving renewable energy. After completing four modules and a competency exam for MITx certification, students work in teams to help client communities in various cities around the United States. Through direct interactions with the proponents and opponents of facilities subject to local opposition, students complete a stakeholder assessment and offer joint fact-finding and collaborative problem-solving assistance. The political, legal, financial, and regulatory aspects of facility siting, particularly for renewable energy, are reviewed along with key infrastructure planning principles. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments.

This class is open to all graduate students (and advanced undergraduates) at MIT, Wellesley, or Harvard interested in environmental justice, environmental ethics, the tools of environmental analysis, and strategies for collaborative decision-making. The primary objective of the class is to help each student formulate a personal theory of environmental planning practice appropriate to achieving the implementation of environmental justice and sustainable development goals.

The course is taught comparatively, with numerous references to examples from around the world. The course has four parts: Environmental Justice and Environmental Policy-Making, Environmental Ethics and Environmental Policy Debates, Inherent Bias and Environmental Planning Techniques, and Public Participation including Difficult Conversations.

This is a required subject for students who might want to pursue the Environmental Planning Certificate in the School of Architecture and Planning.

Offers a survey of the histories and theories of international development, and the main debates about the role of key actors and institutions in development. Includes a focus on the impact of colonialism, the main theoretical approaches that have influenced the study and practice of development, as well as the role of actors such as States, markets and civil society in development. Focuses on the interactions between interventions and institutions at different scales, from local, national and global/transnational. Offers an opportunity to develop a focus on selected current topics in development planning, such as migration, displacement, participatory planning, urban-rural linkages, corruption, legal institutions and post-conflict development.

Introduces principal issues in the field of advanced urbanism for discussion and exploration. Includes theoretical linkages between ideas about the culture of cities, processes of urbanization, and urban design. Involves events co-organized by faculty and doctoral students to further engage and inform research. 

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. Through readings, practical experience and reflection, empirical observation, and contact with practitioners, students gain deeper general understanding of the practice of the profession and enhanced understanding of the intersection of structural racism and planning. 

Introduces students to key debates in the field of planning theory, drawing on historical development of the field of urban/regional/national planning from 1900 to 2020 in both the US and in newly industrializing countries. Class objectives are for students to develop their own theory of action as they become sensitized to issues of racial and gender discrimination in city building, and understand how planning styles are influenced by a range of issues, including the challenge of ethical practice.

Explores changes in the built environment expected from transportation investments, and how they can be used to promote sustainable and equitable cities. Reflects on how notable characteristics of cities can be explained by their historical and current transportation features. From a historical perspective, e.g., discusses how central areas of most European cities created during the pre-modern transportation era are more walkable, dense, and diverse; and the auto-oriented North American suburbs sprawling during the massive increase in car ownership. Introduces theoretical basis and empirical evidence to analyze the urban transformation autonomous vehicles will bring and how shared mobility services affect travel behavior, and its implications from an urban planning perspective. Lectures interspersed with guest speakers and an optional field trip. Subject can count toward the 6-unit discovery-focused credit limit for first-year students.

Knowing how a place has been shaped over time is essential to understanding its present and possible future. The urban designer/planner must ask: What is this place in the process of becoming? Which of its features are clues to ongoing processes that continue to exert a decisive influence, and which are merely artifacts of the past that assert little influence now? Which features are amenable to change and which are resistant? What are the stories residents tell of their shared experiences of place? It is difficult to answer such questions without understanding how a place evolved, through what processes and actions, when, and which of its features and stories have had a sustained impact. A historical perspective puts these patterns and stories in context and suggests their relevance for planning the future, especially powerful when combined with an ecological and social justice perspective.

This one-credit workshop is for all doctoral students in residence.  The workshop features doctoral student progress on dissertation formulation and findings across all years, panels of particular interest to doctoral students as identified by their representatives on the PhD Committee, and an intellectual space for the sharing of ideas and initiatives within the doctoral community and across the department, including faculty. 

Explores changes in the built environment expected from transportation investments, and how they can be used to promote sustainable and equitable cities. Reflects on how notable characteristics of cities can be explained by their historical and current transportation features. From a historical perspective, e.g., discusses how central areas of most European cities created during the pre-modern transportation era are more walkable, dense, and diverse; and the auto-oriented North American suburbs sprawling during the massive increase in car ownership. Introduces theoretical basis and empirical evidence to analyze the urban transformation autonomous vehicles will bring and how shared mobility services affect travel behavior, and its implications from an urban planning perspective. Lectures interspersed with guest speakers and an optional field trip. 

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

Designed for students writing a thesis in Urban Studies and Planning or Architecture. Develop research topics, review relevant research and scholarship, frame research questions and arguments, choose an appropriate methodology for analysis, and draft introductory and methodology sections.