department
programs
degrees
Cross-Cutting
The Department offers many subjects for undergraduates and graduates alike. These are broken down into core, specialized and research subjects. Each year the Department offers 25 undergraduate and more than 90 graduate subjects of instruction from which each student designs, with faculty guidance, an individual program of study that matches their interests and experiences.
Many of the courses developed by DUSP faculty are provided free to the public through MIT's Open CourseWare site.
Examines the evolving structure of cities and the way that cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas can be designed and developed. Surveys the ideas of a wide range of people who have addressed urban problems. Stresses the connection between values and design. Demonstrates how physical, social, political and economic forces interact to shape and reshape cities over time.
This course introduces undergraduates to the history, theory, and practice of international development. We take an interdisciplinary and applied approach to some of the "big questions" in our field, drawing from history, economics, sociology, and anthropology: What does development mean? Why are some countries poorer than others?
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.
Reviews and analyzes federal and state regulation of air and water pollution, hazardous waste, green-house gas emissions, and the production and use of toxic chemicals. Analyzes pollution as an economic problem and the failure of markets. Explores the role of science and economics in legal decisions.
Introduces client-oriented research and the use of urban planning tools. Students work directly with government and community agencies to find solutions to real world problems; interview planners and other field experts, and write and present findings to client and community audiences.
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.
Independent study for students enrolled in the Digital Cities New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) thread. Students must attend three speaker events (lectures or talks) relevant to urban science, and write a report on how different discussions help them to contextualize the understanding in digital cities and connect their NEET project-based learning experience.
Explores the physical, ecological, technological, political, economic and cultural implications of big plans and mega-urban landscapes in a global context. Uses local and international case studies to understand the process of making major changes to urban landscape and city fabric, and to regional landscape systems. Includes lectures by leading practitioners.
One of two introductory subjects on teaching and learning science and mathematics in a variety of K-12 settings. Topics include student misconceptions, formative assessment, standards and standardized testing, multiple intelligences, and educational technology.
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.
Students continue their IAP student teaching through mid March. Topics include educational psychology, theories of learning, and using technology and evaluating its effectiveness to enhance student learning.
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. Explores federal housing and economic development programs as well as state and local public finance tools.
Surveys important developments in urbanism from 1900 to the present, using film as a lens to explore and interpret aspects of the urban experience in the US and abroad. Topics include industrialization, demographics, diversity, the environment, and the relationship between the community and the individual.
Examines the built, psychosocial, economic, and natural environment factors that affect health behaviors and outcomes. Introduces tools designed to integrate public health considerations into policymaking and planning. Provides extensive practical training in the application of health impact assessment (HIA) methodology, which brings a health lens to policy, budgeting, and planning debates.
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 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.
Focuses on the ways economics and politics influence the fate of energy technologies, business models, and policies around the world. Extends fundamental concepts in the social sciences to case studies and simulations that illustrate how corporate, government, and individual decisions shape energy and environmental outcomes.
An introduction to the research and empirical analysis of urban planning issues using geographic information systems. Extensive hands-on exercises provide experience with various techniques in spatial analysis and querying databases.
Introduces applications of microeconomic theory to planning problems including urban form and structure, government's role in urban settings and problems of housing finance.
Introduces basic economic analysis for planning students including the functioning of markets, the allocation of scarce resources among competing uses, profit maximizing behavior in different market structures. Course illustrates theory with contemporary economic issues.
Half 1 class.
Practical introduction to spatial analysis and geographic information systems (GIS). Examines how geography is represented digitally and how nonrandom distributions of phenomena as diverse as poverty and scenic resources can be better understood by examining their spatial characteristics. Limited enrollment;
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 logical, empirically based arguments using statistical techniques and analytic methods. Covers elementary statistics, probability, and other types of quantitative reasoning useful for description, estimation, comparison, and explanation. Emphasizes the use and limitations of analytical techniques in planning practice.
This course introduces students to Participatory Action Research (PAR), which is an approach to research and inquiry that enables communities to examine and address consequential societal problems.
Surveys important developments in urbanism from 1900 to the present, using film as a lens to explore and interpret aspects of the urban experience in the US and abroad. Topics include industrialization, demographics, diversity, the environment, and the relationship between the community and the individual.
Examines how the development of the built environment produces and reproduces conceptions of race - sociobiological theories of human difference.
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.
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.
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.
Investigates social conflict and distributional disputes in the public sector. While theoretical aspects of conflict and consensus building are considered, focus is on the practice of negotiation and dispute resolution. Comparisons between unassisted and assisted negotiation are reviewed along with the techniques of facilitation and mediation.
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.
Explores specific challenges of urban last-mile B2C and B2B distribution in both industrialized and emerging economies. Develops an in-depth understanding of the perspectives, roles, and decisions of all relevant stakeholder groups, from consumers to private sector decision makers and public policy makers.
Focuses on the ways economics and politics influence the fate of energy technologies, business models, and policies around the world. Extends fundamental concepts in the social sciences to case studies and simulations that illustrate how corporate, government, and individual decisions shape energy and environmental outcomes.
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.
Focuses on the synthesis of urban, mixed-use real estate projects, including the integration of physical design and programming with finance and marketing. Interdisciplinary student teams analyze how to maximize value across multiple dimensions in the process of preparing professional development proposals for sites in US cities and internationally.
Introduces a range of practical approaches involved in evaluating and planning sites within the context of natural and cultural systems. Develops the knowledge and skills to analyze and plan a site for development through exercises and an urban design project.
Design studio that includes architects and city planners working in teams on a contemporary development project of importance in China, particularly in transitional, deindustrializing cities. Students analyze conditions, explore alternatives, and synthesize architecture, city design, and implementation plans.
Examines the urban environment as a natural phenomenon, human habitat, medium of expression, and forum for action. Subject has two related, major themes: how ideas of nature influence the way cities are perceived, designed, built, and managed; and how natural processes and urban form interact and the consequences of these for human health safety and welfare.
Explores photography as a disciplined way of seeing, of investigating urban landscapes and expressing ideas. Readings, observations, and photographs form the basis of discussions on light, detail, place, poetics, narrative, and how photography can inform design and planning.
Focuses on analyzing a variety of unique international real estate investment and development transactions. Blends real estate investing and development decision-making with discussion-based learning from a multidisciplinary standpoint.
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.
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.
Examines innovations in urban design practice occurring through the work of leading practitioners in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning. Features lectures by major national and global practitioners in urban design.
Examines the relationship between urban design ideals, urban design action, and the built environment through readings, discussions, presentations, and papers. Analyzes the diverse design ideals that influence cities and settlements, and investigates how urban designers use them to shape urban form.
Develops a strong strategic understanding of how best to deliver various types of projects in the built environment. Examines the compatibility of various project delivery methods, consisting of organizations, contracts, and award methods, with certain types of projects and owners.
Focuses on key business and legal issues within the principal agreements used to lease, finance, and restructure a real estate venture.
Investigates the economics and finance of securitization. Considers the basic mechanics of structuring deals for various asset-backed securities. Investigates the pricing of pooled assets, using Monte Carlo and other option pricing techniques, as well as various trading strategies used in these markets.
Examines the built, psychosocial, economic, and natural environment factors that affect health behaviors and outcomes. Introduces tools designed to integrate public health considerations into policymaking and planning. Provides extensive practical training in the application of health impact assessment (HIA) methodology, which brings a health lens to policy, budgeting, and planning debates.
Examines the history and dynamics of international environmental treaty-making, or what is called environmental diplomacy. Emphasizes climate change and other atmospheric, marine resource, global waste management and sustainability-related treaties and the problems of implementing them.
Examines managing work in the 21st century as technological advances transform the organization of the firm. Students interview workers and explore leading-edge firms who apply human- and worker-centered design to augment rather than replace people. Draws on materials from the MIT Task Force on Work of the Future and the online course Shaping Work of the Future.
Investigates the relationship between states and markets in the evolution of modern capitalism.
Discusses the broader trends in the labor market, how urban labor markets function, public and private training policy, other labor market programs, the link between labor market policy and economic development, and the organization of work within firms.
Introduces real estate capital markets for institutional investors. Topics include real estate investment trusts (REIT), commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), and private equity. Concepts and techniques for investment analysis may include portfolio theory and equilibrium asset pricing. Additional topics may include price indexing and derivatives.
Introduction to analytical tools to support design and decision-making in real estate, infrastructure development, and investment. Particular focus on identifying and valuing sources of flexibility using "real options," Monte-Carlo simulation, and other techniques from the field of engineering systems.
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. Explores federal housing and economic development programs as well as state and local public finance tools.
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.
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.
Focuses on disseminating Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) or water/environment innovations in developing countries and underserved communities worldwide. Structured around field-based learning, case studies, lectures and videos in which teams propose an idea and are mentored through the process of bringing that innovation to fruition.
Informs and prepares students to navigate the explicit and implicit power dynamics among stakeholders in decision-making processes that govern the planning and delivery of water and sanitation systems.
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.
Explores relationships between built environments and memory to consider the spaces and spatial practices in which the future of the past is imagined, negotiated, and contested.
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.
Half 2 class.
The fundamentals of database management systems as applied to spatial analysis. Includes extensive hands-on exercises using real-world planning data. Introduces database management concepts, SQL (Structured Query Language), and enterprise-class database software. Same content as first half of 11.521.
Learning and utilizing advanced geographic information system techniques in studio/lab setting with real-world client problem and complex digital spatial data infrastructure. Projects typically use the client and infrastructure setting for 11.521. Credit cannot also be received for 11.521 in the same term.
Focuses on the integration of land use and transportation planning, drawing from cases in both industrialized and developing countries. Reviews underlying theories, analytical techniques, and the empirical evidence of the land use-transportation relationship at the metropolitan, intra-metropolitan, and micro-scales.
Reviews and analyzes federal and state regulation of air and water pollution, hazardous waste, green-house gas emissions, and the production and use of toxic chemicals. Analyzes pollution as an economic problem and the failure of markets. Explores the role of science and economics in legal decisions.
Practical exploration of community revitalization in America's small towns and rural regions. Focuses on work, community, and culture. Consists of rigorous classroom discussions, research, and team projects with community development organizations.
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.
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.
This course introduces computational thinking and applied data science practice related to urban domain. Students learn principles, tools, and techniques of using data for urban problem-solving through hands-on exercises in Python.
Demography is said to be destiny. A new longevity economy is emerging. While all nations are aging, studies indicate that nearly half of the children born in industrialized economies will live over 100 years. By 2047, there may be more adults over 60 years old then children under 15 worldwide. Planning and preparing for a 100-year society is a major challenge for government and business.
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.
Indigenous communities, including Native American tribes in the United States, are more connected culturally to the natural environment than most other people. They have evolved ways to manage natural resources on their land, even when the dominant culture that surrounds them seeks to thwart their ability to do so. And, in recent years, they have had to find ways to adapt to the unexpected im
This course examines climate adaptation and mitigation responses at the city level. The course examines factors of greatest concern in adapting cities to climate change including infrastructure, energy food and water systems, health, housing and environmental justice.
This course introduces computational thinking and applied data science practice related to urban domain. Students learn principles, tools, and techniques of using data for urban problem-solving through hands-on exercises in Python.
Indigenous communities, including Native American tribes in the United States, are more connected culturally to the natural environment than most other people. They have evolved ways to manage natural resources on their land, even when the dominant culture that surrounds them seeks to thwart their ability to do so. And, in recent years, they have had to find ways to adapt to the unexpected im
Demography is said to be destiny. A new longevity economy is emerging. While all nations are aging, studies indicate that nearly half of the children born in industrialized economies will live over 100 years. By 2047, there may be more adults over 60 years old then children under 15 worldwide. Planning and preparing for a 100-year society is a major challenge for government and business.
The course investigates a number of qualitative and quantitative methods to measure and analyze urban spatial problems relevant to contemporary urban planning and design practice. The course is based in part on literature on spatial analysis and in part on newly emerging topics in urban analytics.
This workshop explores cross-jurisdictional climate change policies and their effects on equity and socially vulnerable populations. The course examines factors of greatest concern in adapting cities to climate change including infrastructure, energy food and water systems, health, housing and environmental justice. The course will review climate change hazards and social vulnerability to clima
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?
Survey of the latest transportation research offered by 12 MIT faculty each presenting their on-going research. Students are required to attend the classes, read the assigned articles, and write a brief reflection memo.
This course introduces computational thinking and applied data science practice related to urban domain. Students learn principles, tools, and techniques of using data for urban problem-solving through hands-on exercises in Python.
Housing is in crisis globally, from a pandemic of evictions, lack of affordability, increasing homelessness, precarious living in informal settlements, increasing segregation and increasing commodification of land and housing. In this first-ever clinic at DUSP, a housing justice perspective will be used to engage with the multiple dimensions of the global housing crisis, including during the C
This course is intended for MCP students preparing to write their thesis. The class will introduce the basics of field research, including different types of data collection and qualitative data analysis techniques. Over the course of the semester, students will develop their ideas for their thesis project and prepare a thesis proposal.