Subjects

The topic of this year’s Digital City Design Workshop is heat in cities. Global temperatures are increasing consistently, with harsh consequences to cities: warmer temperatures present public health threats, increase energy consumption spent with cooling systems, and move people away from public transportation and active modes, pushing emissions up, and leading to a vicious cycle. To have a real-world sense of the challenges warmer temperatures present in cities, and which opportunities the combination of sensing technologies, data analytics, and design bring to tackle this crisis, we will focus on two sites: Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Rome, Italy.  Students will conduct and present background research, identify relevant questions, deploy active sensing devices or tap into open datasets already present in cities, collect data, prepare analysis, and develop design ideas integrating technologies. The workshop combines lectures, hands-on activities, fieldwork, and students' work supervised by the teaching team. Fieldwork will be performed as part of a site visit in Dubai and Rome during the week of March 24th (Spring Break). Students are expected to travel to either one of the two cities and travel expenses will be covered by the course. Students are required to apply at this link https://podio.com/webforms/30025911/2504254

Instructors: Fábio Duarte, Simone Mora

Covers the design, ethical, and technical skills for creating effective visualizations. Short assignments build familiarity with the data analysis and visualization design process. Weekly lab sessions present coding and technical skills. A final project provides experience working with real-world big data, provided by external partners, in order to expose and communicate insights about societal issues. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

Every landscape represents an incomplete or interrupted plan that tells time and intention. Physical landscapes provide evidence of successful, failed and emergent development plans, but only the learned eye sees beyond the material culture of the street. “Death” offers a way to conceptualize the unseen, underground, the underneath, the liminal space between what we know, what is actual and what is yet to be. Linking social theory, geography, public policy and planning history, this course asks: How can planners and critical observers of the built environment begin to access the collection of meanings that script the movement, stasis and location of everyday users? In other words, how do we move beyond official maps, plans and histories to consider contested meanings of place as they are lived, exchanged and created. Through weekly examinations of first person documentary accounts including ethnography, historical fiction, autobiography, film and novels, students will analyze the social, political and geographic impact of various land development strategies in the U.S. and beyond. Displacement defines a major theme of this course -- students will examine: 1) How does this happen? 2) What have been subsequent local responses? And, 3) What are the lasting consequences of population dispersals? 

Informed by ethnographic method and archival immersion, this course will provide students with an interdisciplinary framework for identifying and describing the social impact of place-based change and capital movement. Students will develop a critical understanding of urban planning informed by resident-authored analysis across time and space.

The course explores the emerging basis of a social carbon economy and focuses on the understanding of how to integrate technology and social considerations into carbon management and emissions reduction strategies within urban areas. Urban areas are significant contributors to carbon emissions due to factors like transportation, industry, and energy consumption. Therefore, addressing carbon emissions in cities is crucial for global efforts to combat climate change. In an urban social carbon economy, the course will focus on efforts to reduce carbon emissions and will explore methodologies to design solutions with a focus on social equity, community well-being, and inclusive development within urban contexts. 

The course examines the intersections that enable individuals, communities, institutions, and corporations to take action by actively measuring, monitoring, and reducing their carbon emissions. By deepening in the understanding of the power of Artificial Intelligence and behavior change, which has the potential to reduce carbon emissions by one-third globally, the new carbon economy will create opportunities to accelerate the net-zero goals across all industries. Students will deepen their understanding of carbon avoidance and reduction products and infrastructure that leverage existing and new technologies like AI, sensor fusion, gamification, blockchain, and incentive systems that will power the new economy."

This under/graduate-level reading seminar focuses on the critical intersections between Indigenous knowledge systems, water resources management, and environmental justice. The course centers readings in genres of Indigenous futurisms to cover the basics of Indigenous water and energy planning. Through the lens of these genres, guest lectures, discussions, and case studies, students will understand the emergent trends in the development of traditional ecological knowledge. At the end of the course, students will propose speculative projects to scale community-based water planning interventions and initiatives towards utility scale to support the sovereignty and self-determination of Indigenous governments.

MITdesignX, working together with MISTI and the Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow (MEET) presents a unique opportunity to engage with alumni of MEET -  aspiring Israeli and Palestinian changemakers in the region.  This class, Social Entrepreneurship in the Middle East, is one of three components of MEET Constellation. 

MEET is an impactful educational organization with a mission to educate and empower the next generation of Palestinian and Israeli leaders. MEET equips these future changemakers with the skills and tools needed to drive positive social and political change in the region. Since 2004, in collaboration with MIT instructors, MEET has engaged hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian high school students with its academic and social impact curriculum. 

MEET Constellation: In order to support and expand opportunities for its alumni in their quest to lead urgently needed change, “MEET Constellation” was developed to engage both alumni of the MEET program and current MIT graduate students.  Participants will work together to idenitfy and frame some of the deeper root causes that underly, perpetuate and/or exacerbate the conflict in the region.  Through a curriculum rooted in participatory design and prototyping, participants will conduct a needs analysis and stakeholder map to inform specific problems, and propose feasible solutions that can be implemented and begin to make a positive impact and generate necessary change in the mindset and actions of people in the region.

Introduces the fundamental components of urban health systems, including emergency medical services, community health centers and primary and specialty care facilities, hospitals and hospital networks, and health insurance providers. Explores the role of public policy, and state, local, and provider variation in these structures on access to care, health care costs, and health equity. This is a Half One class.

President Johnson’s short five-year tenure ushered in some of the most essential midcentury rights policies that touched all Americans. Starting in 1964, Johnson ushered in the Civil Rights Act, and then in 1965, he pushed through the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Policy programs included the creation of Medicare, Medicaid, and Head Start, and he made critical early steps toward environmental policy reform. Understanding how these monumental programs emerged and were designed and implemented provides lessons for planners and prospective policymakers practicing in a new era of radical reform. Mondays 2-5.

This seminar investigates the need for new ways to think about landscape + infrastructure as the impacts of climate change alters the way we design and live in urbanized areas. We will focus on the planning, design, and implementation of real physical infrastructures (versus policies and other soft infrastructure levers). This class begins by acknowledging that humanity has entered into a new geologic epoch termed the Anthropocene, defined by anthropogenic impacts on the planet. Important questions about landscape + infrastructure for the Anthropocene will be explored: Where do planners/designers have agency to mitigate with newly imagined infrastructures for our changing cities and planetary health? At what scale is infrastructure an appropriate response to an environmental problem? How does one evaluate effectiveness and other trade-offs / costs / benefits of resiliency? Can one build consensus among key players / constituents around what is happening and how the designed response addresses needs? How do designers or planners gain political, financial, and social support to guarantee that build out and maintenance are implemented as envisioned?

Introduces the fundamental components of urban health systems, including emergency medical services, community health centers and primary and specialty care facilities, hospitals and hospital networks, and health insurance providers. Explores the role of public policy, and state, local, and provider variation in these structures on access to care, health care costs, and health equity. This is a Half One class.

"Making Good on Baltimore as a Just City: Building Solutions For A Vacant Housing Crisis, as a practicum will have students immersed in two related projects: Develop a complex revitalization plan for a neglected city neighborhood using the case scenario, The Urban Plan (UP) and complete deliverables for a real client, Flight Blight Baltimore. The UP case scenario activities examine the nexus between development and urban planning. Students will go through an eight-stage development process model, and the material will cover idea conception, feasibility, planning, financing, market analysis, contract negotiation, construction, and asset management. Other topics discussed include but are not limited to market analysis, site acquisition, due diligence, zoning, entitlements, approvals, site planning, building design, construction, financing, leasing, and ongoing management and disposition. 

Working on a project for a client will allow students to solve a community challenge in real-time, pushing students to rethink the concept of stakeholder engagement in vacant housing underutilized infrastructure in Baltimore. Students will engage the idea of using citizen engineers to explore how the current demolish vacant building initiative by the City of Baltimore can integrate resident perspective in the city’s neighborhood stabilization initiatives. Part of this course will also explore how emerging vacant building assessment digital technology certification in the job market is linked to just banking and economies. The primary deliverables will center on data collection and analysis, and mapping. During the practicum experience, students will create their personal theory of practice, develop reflective practice strategies, and learn and deploy community engagement strategies."

This course offers a cross-disciplinary introduction to the archive as a site of contestation, erasure and possibility for students, planning practitioners and local communities seeking innovative models for city justice and reconciliation. Combining academic theory with client-engaged practice, this course gives students a hands-on learning opportunity to tackle ground level issues with real stakeholders in real time. Co-taught by a textile artist-historian and archival educator, students will be presented with a set of woven documents highlighting the major themes of the course: collective agency, social activism and diverse histories of resistance and disruption. Students will learn how to analyze these woven documents in order to become more nuanced readers of a variety of cultural objects including landscapes, urban plans and social histories spanning Toronto, Boston and Rochester (New York). This course will ultimately provide students with a research and action framework intent on destabilizing colonial modes of data extraction by re-centering community-driven design and use.

This workshop provides a practical introduction to Quantitative Spatial Models (QSMs) focusing on urban economics and economic geography. Participants will engage with core concepts of neoclassical urban economics, spatial equilibrium frameworks, and general equilibrium models that integrate labor and land markets. The course emphasizes hands-on learning and covers key techniques for managing spatial data and solving spatial general equilibrium models. Designed for PhD students, master’s students, and postdocs in economics, urban studies, and related fields, the workshop culminates in a capstone project that simulates the impacts of transport infrastructure projects. By the end of the workshop, participants will have the skills to apply QSM methods to analyze counterfactual spatial shocks and policies.

How can integrated inter-scale design – from the systems level (e.g., energy systems, workforce systems, mobility systems) to the neighborhood level (e.g., street design, building design), the community level (e.g., engagement systems), and the “device” level (e.g., energy storage) – be used to co-create (with communities) green-economy based local economic development strategies? This workshop class aims to answer this question (taught in parallel with an Architecture Urban Design Studio) in collaboration with local government (NYC Economic Development Corporation, EDC) and a local community organization. The subject is driven by the theory of change that just urban transitions require work at the intersection of a range of needs and opportunities driven by the climate crisis, including designing: for waterfront resilience, systems for energy transitions (e.g., battery storage, vehicle electrification), and approaches to maximize community benefits (e.g., workforce training for “green jobs”, entrepreneurial development, cooperative ownership models).  

Introduces foundational principles of environmental justice and presents the history of the environmental justice movement and how the movement connects to research, including community engaged research. Explores how scientific and technological tools, such as earth observation technology or geographical information systems (GIS), can be used to better understand and address environmental justice issues. Analyzes how emerging engineering approaches to climate change and environment may affect environmental justice and injustice. Enables students to engage in group projects connected to local environmental justice issues. Aims to spur institutional conversation on how environmental justice and community-centered approaches can provide a framework for STEM education, research, design, and innovation.

This course will engage with the theory and practice of planning and public policy making, examining how these two fields intersect and are evolving in the context of current national and global priorities including challenges to the dominant paradigms of neoliberalism and globalization as well as the passage of historic legislation in the U.S. in the past year. Classic literature in these fields will be augmented with readings and discussions around themes relevant to the current context such as race, ethnicity and equity, sustainability, labor, industrial strategy and inclusive growth, innovation and equity and geographic diversity.  The course will bring in speakers across these topics in the form of policymakers and planners from cities and states across the US as well as in the federal government to learn how they are planning and implementing new policies, how this has changed if at all compared to the past, and how they are positioned to potentially access and invest the unprecedented new federal funding that will be coming to cities and states in the next 5-10 years. Students will write multiple policy memos on relevant topics throughout the course as well as be paired with partner cities/states to develop in-depth briefs for policymakers and community leaders on ‘ideas and issues to consider’ when applying for and implementing new federal programs and policies.  

Addressing climate change and the transition to a net zero economy will require large scale financing across multiple sectors and for a diverse set of projects. This course will provide graduate students with knowledge and skills specific to financing projects and creating financial institutions, polices and tools to accelerate the transition to a net zero economy while also advancing racial and economic equity. Topics covered will include:  1) the varied financing tools, products and services used in green finance; 2) how mission-driven financial intermediaries work and different intermediary models applicable to green finance;  3) the financing needs and issues of different economic/energy use sectors and the role of green finance in addressing them;  and 4) explore how to address systemic racism in the finance system and advance racial and economic justice through green finance.  Students will work on a client project to gain experience in designing proposals/solutions to address a green financing need or problem.

Every landscape represents an incomplete or interrupted plan that tells time and intention. Physical landscapes provide evidence of successful, failed and emergent development plans, but only the learned eye sees beyond the material culture of the street. “Death” offers a way to conceptualize the unseen, underground, the underneath, the liminal space between what we know, what is actual and what is yet to be. Linking social theory, geography, public policy and planning history, this course asks: How can planners and critical observers of the built environment begin to access the collection of meanings that script the movement, stasis and location of everyday users? In other words, how do we move beyond official maps, plans and histories to consider contested meanings of place as they are lived, exchanged and created. Through weekly examinations of first person documentary accounts including ethnography, historical fiction, autobiography, film and novels, students will analyze the social, political and geographic impact of various land development strategies in the U.S. and beyond. Displacement defines a major theme of this course -- students will examine: 1) How does this happen? 2) What have been subsequent local responses? And, 3) What are the lasting consequences of population dispersals? 

Informed by ethnographic method and archival immersion, this course will provide students with an interdisciplinary framework for identifying and describing the social impact of place-based change and capital movement. Students will develop a critical understanding of urban planning informed by resident-authored analysis across time and space.

The New Mexico Housing Finance Authority is New Mexico's statewide housing finance agency. They wish to bring on a team from DUSP to study available land and a potential land banking program for affordable housing in New Mexico. The class will include a site visit and exploration of recent state legislation to develop a proposed land bank program. The course will focus on sites in the Santa Fe and Los Alamos areas.

An exploration of blackness in its rich varieties—as material, as mood, as color, as absence (of light), as presence (of racial identity)—and its possibilities in architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, and art. Participants will pay close attention to sophisticated, complex understandings of blackness in multiple disciplines, and will delve into blackness as aesthetic expression and cultural expression, interacting with approaches that expand and deepen how they employ blackness in their work. Participants will create a body of interdisciplinary work, with blackness as major and minor key as they build to a final project that's a visual narrative at the intersection of art and their specialization.

To apply for this class: In no more than 350 words, explain why you are interested in this class and discuss a work—poem, novel, play, painting, photograph, film, sculpture, building, landscape—that influences your understanding of blackness.

President Johnson’s short five-year tenure ushered in some of the most essential midcentury rights policies that touched all Americans. Starting in 1964, Johnson ushered in the Civil Rights Act, and then in 1965, he pushed through the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Policy programs included the creation of Medicare, Medicaid, and Head Start, and he made critical early steps toward environmental policy reform. Understanding how these monumental programs emerged and were designed and implemented provides lessons for planners and prospective policymakers practicing in a new era of radical reform. Mondays 2-5.

The role of the region is changing. With limited resources, there is an urgency to address urban design and planning challenges that transcend local municipalities. Contemporary imperatives dictate new design strategies to advance contemporary urbanism with aging infrastructure, climate change, migration and an increasingly polarized social, racial and economic environment in the U.S.

This under/graduate-level reading seminar focuses on the critical intersections between Indigenous knowledge systems, water resources management, and environmental justice. The course centers readings in genres of Indigenous futurisms to cover the basics of Indigenous water and energy planning. Through the lens of these genres, guest lectures, discussions, and case studies, students will understand the emergent trends in the development of traditional ecological knowledge. At the end of the course, students will propose speculative projects to scale community-based water planning interventions and initiatives towards utility scale to support the sovereignty and self-determination of Indigenous governments.

This course will introduce theoretical and methodological considerations for conducting interdisciplinary urban studies and planning research. The course explores types of questions, methodological approaches, and considerations that have traditionally defined urban studies and planning research, and discusses the value that urban studies and planning research traditions bring to allied fields. The course begins with a general introduction to the philosophy of research. Following this introduction, we will cover ten key ideas: 1) theories of change; 2) research ethics; 3) units of analysis: precision and reductionism (e.g., here we'll discuss the concepts such as “populations” "places" "systems" and "infrastructure"); 4) attributes: latent constructs and measurement theory; 5) scale and boundaries; 6) comparison: differences and changes; 7) roles of normative frameworks; 8) power and social difference; 9) public(s), stakeholders, and researcher positionality; and 10) action. The course is primarily intended to support students who are actively engaged in researching inequality as part of a thesis, dissertation, or other current research project. Students should bring a research proposal or manuscript (draft or idea phase) to class, as assignments will ask students to apply lessons from class in developing a final research proposal or research paper. Heavy emphasis on workshopping and peer review.

The course explores the emerging basis of a social carbon economy and focuses on the understanding of how to integrate technology and social considerations into carbon management and emissions reduction strategies within urban areas. Urban areas are significant contributors to carbon emissions due to factors like transportation, industry, and energy consumption. Therefore, addressing carbon emissions in cities is crucial for global efforts to combat climate change. In an urban social carbon economy, the course will focus on efforts to reduce carbon emissions and will explore methodologies to design solutions with a focus on social equity, community well-being, and inclusive development within urban contexts. 

The course examines the intersections that enable individuals, communities, institutions, and corporations to take action by actively measuring, monitoring, and reducing their carbon emissions. By deepening in the understanding of the power of Artificial Intelligence and behavior change, which has the potential to reduce carbon emissions by one-third globally, the new carbon economy will create opportunities to accelerate the net-zero goals across all industries. Students will deepen their understanding of carbon avoidance and reduction products and infrastructure that leverage existing and new technologies like AI, sensor fusion, gamification, blockchain, and incentive systems that will power the new economy."

MITdesignX, working together with MISTI and the Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow (MEET) presents a unique opportunity to engage with alumni of MEET -  aspiring Israeli and Palestinian changemakers in the region.  This class, Social Entrepreneurship in the Middle East, is one of three components of MEET Constellation. 

MEET is an impactful educational organization with a mission to educate and empower the next generation of Palestinian and Israeli leaders. MEET equips these future changemakers with the skills and tools needed to drive positive social and political change in the region. Since 2004, in collaboration with MIT instructors, MEET has engaged hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian high school students with its academic and social impact curriculum. 

MEET Constellation: In order to support and expand opportunities for its alumni in their quest to lead urgently needed change, “MEET Constellation” was developed to engage both alumni of the MEET program and current MIT graduate students.  Participants will work together to idenitfy and frame some of the deeper root causes that underly, perpetuate and/or exacerbate the conflict in the region.  Through a curriculum rooted in participatory design and prototyping, participants will conduct a needs analysis and stakeholder map to inform specific problems, and propose feasible solutions that can be implemented and begin to make a positive impact and generate necessary change in the mindset and actions of people in the region.

This course is an advanced doctoral workshop on the political economy of climate change. The workshop aims to provide Ph.D. students working on climate change, across sectors and disciplines, with a foundation in the theoretical and methodological approaches of polit-ical economy to conceptualize and conduct independent research. Substantively, the work-shop takes a critical political economy approach to the climate crisis and examines three in-terrelated dimensions: (1) the political governance challenge of mobilizing climate action, given the need to design new institutional mechanisms to address the global and intergener-ational distributional aspects of climate change; (2) the economic challenge of devising new institutional approaches to equitably finance climate action in ways that go beyond the cur-rently dominant economic rationale; and (3) the cultural challenge – and opportunity – of empowering an adaptive socio-cultural ecology through traditional knowledge and local-level social networks to achieve climate resilience.

This “Real Estate Action Lab” practicum will be a joint practicum/action learning course between Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), Center for Real Estate (CRE) and the Sloan School (MBA Program).
This practicum highlights the cross-disciplinary skills (urban design and planning, policy, real estate, economics, finance, and business) in addressing complex challenges in nowadays’ urban development and real estate industry. Students from DUSP, CRE and Sloan MBA will be mixed up so that they can learn from each other, and this will also help them develop cross-culture and cross-disciplinary management skills.

In Spring 2025, the theme will be “climate responsive real estate”. In today's rapidly evolving real estate landscape, sustainability and climate resilience have emerged as critical factors shaping investment and development decisions. As global concerns about climate change intensify, the real estate industry faces unprecedented challenges and opportunities to innovate. Sustainable real estate practices not only mitigate environmental impact but also enhance long-term asset value through energy efficiency, resource conservation, and the integration of green technologies. Meanwhile, climate-responsive and resilient real estate focuses on creating buildings and communities that are better equipped to withstand the increasing risks of extreme weather events and changing environmental conditions.

Students taking this practicum will have the opportunity to engage in hands-on projects with one of two clients, who are national leaders in sustainable real estate development and investment strategies. Students will work in multi-disciplinary teams on the following topics and challenges raised by the client:  sustainable investment strategy, green building certification and energy retrofitting, energy efficiency of project-community integration, and decarbonization of residential and office assets in portfolios. Students will work with emerging technology to design high quality, evidence-based sustainable investment and climate responsive real estate proposals for our clients. The results of this practicum will have great potential to inform climate responsive asset management and sustainable investment strategies.

Instructors:
Siqi Zheng (Professor, MIT DUSP and CRE, email: sqzheng@mit.edu)
Jake Cohen (Senior Associate Dean and Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan, email: jcohen28@mit.edu)

Clients and Project Locations: Developers/Owners of Multi-family and Office buildings in Washington D.C. and Massachusetts
Necessary Skills: No requirement for urban design skills. Knowledge and interest in urban and real estate development, finance and management, environmental planning and policy, or urban science are preferred.