Seminar on the history of selected features of the physical environment of urban America. Among the features considered are parks, cemeteries, tenements, suburbs, zoos, skyscrapers, department stores, supermarkets, and amusement parks. Focuses on readings and discussions.

The Beijing Urban Design Studio is a joint program between the MIT and Tsinghua University Schools of Architecture and Planning. The goal of the studio is to foster international cooperation through the undertaking of a joint urban design and planning initiative in the city of Beijing involving important, often controversial, sites and projects. Since 1995, almost 250 MIT and Tsinghua University students and faculty have participated annually in the studio, making it one of the most successful and enduring international academic programs between China and the US. It has received the Irwin Sizer Award from MIT for outstanding innovation in education. The studio takes place over five weeks in June and July including several weeks in residence at Tsinghua University and two brief study tours to locations and projects that inform the work. It will include 18-20 MIT and 10-15 Tsinghua Architecture and Planning students. The Beijing City Planning Institute, responsible for strategic planning in the city, participates in the studio as the client.

This is the 20th anniversary of the Beijing Urban Design Studio, which is a joint program between the MIT and Tsinghua University Schools of Architecture and Planning. The goal of the studio is to foster international cooperation through the undertaking of a joint urban design and planning initiative in the city of Beijing involving important, often controversial, sites and projects. Since 1995, almost 250 MIT and Tsinghua University students and faculty have participated in this annual studio, making it one of the most successful and enduring international academic programs between China and the US. It has received the Irwin Sizer Award from MIT for outstanding innovation in education. The studio takes place over five weeks in June and July including several weeks in residence at Tsinghua University and two brief study tours to locations and projects that inform the work. It will include 18-20 MIT and 10-15 Tsinghua Architecture and Planning students. The Beijing City Planning Institute, responsible for strategic planning in the city, participates in the studio as the client.

Examines the evolving structure of cities, the dynamic processes that shape them, and the significance of a city's history for its future development. Develops the ability to read urban form as an interplay of natural processes and human purposes over time. Field assignments in Boston provide the opportunity to use, develop, and refine these concepts.

City to City, as a class, will jump into the complexity of planning in New Orleans, a post-disaster city. City-to-City will ask how a post-disaster city grapple with its ideas of identity, what it is, who it represents, and how it projects its sense of self to residences, businesses, tourists, and to the outside world. In considering its people, how do city planners think about who lives where and why? At the same time, how can city planners celebrate a city's history and its culture and how can these elements be woven into reconstruction? Students will travel from Cambridge to New Orleans over Spring Break to meet and consult with their alumni clients, and continue to work on projects.

Seminar provides an overview of quantitative and qualitative research methods in the social sciences. Topics covered include: hypothesis formulation and theory construction; data collection techniques (experimental, survey, and observational); ethical issues in research; and how to prepare a research proposal. Goal is to provide students with the methodological skills to evaluate existing studies and to select appropriate methods for use in their own research.

In this lesson, students will take their knowledge about the hydrosphere and apply it to the issue of population growth and development. In particular, students will learn how increasing development in eastern North Carolina may have worsened the effects of flooding from Hurricane Floyd, due to lack of soil and tree absorption of run-off. Students will create their own development plans for North Carolina in small groups, explaining how their plan will benefit North Carolina’s water resources and environment.

Focuses on the role of the business improvement district (BID) as a popular and contemporary tool for urban revitalization. Explores BID origins, theoretical underpinnings, enabling legislation, and organizational issues. Emphasizes BID service provision including advocacy, marketing, sanitation, streetscape improvement, security and transportation, while examining BID performance using such indicators as crime rates, vacancy rates, and retail sales. Considers BID organizations throughout North America as well as comparable schemes in Australia, Holland, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. This course focuses on the origins, functions, and implications of downtown management organizations (DMOs), such as business improvement districts, in a variety of national contexts including the United States, Canada, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. It critically examines how a range of urban theories provide a rationale for the establishment and design of DMOs; the evolution and transnational transfer of DMO policy; and the spatial and political externalities associated with the local proliferation of DMOs. Particular emphasis is given to the role of DMOs in securing public space.

Seminar on downtown in US cities from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth. Emphasis on downtown as an idea, place, and cluster of interests, on the changing character of downtown, and on recent efforts to rebuild it. Subjects considered include subways, skyscrapers, highways, urban renewal, and retail centers. Focus on readings, discussions, and individual research projects. Meets with graduate subject 11.339, but assignments differ.

Students begin by reading Dr. Seuss' The Lorax as an example of how over-development can cause long-lasting environmental destruction. Students discuss how to balance the needs of the environment with the needs of human industry. Student teams are asked to serve as natural resource engineers, city planning engineers and civil engineers with the task to replant the nearly destroyed forest and develop a sustainable community design that can co-exist with the re-established natural area.

Subject introduces persistent themes and challenges facing planners. Emphasizes historical roots of contemporary problems and comparative study of practice in the US and other countries. Eight week module intended for first semester MCP students. This class introduces first semester MCP students to the persistent themes and challenges facing planners. The goals of this class are: to excite students about their chosen profession; to offer a theoretical framework for thinking about the kinds of interventions that planners are expected to take; to introduce students to some of the most interesting and challenging theoretical debates in the planning field; and to press students to think about the best way of using their time to ensure their own personal professional development.

Subject introduces persistent themes and challenges facing planners. Emphasizes historical roots of contemporary problems and comparative study of practice in the US and other countries. Eight week module intended for first semester MCP students.

The purpose of the course is to cultivate the sensibilities necessary for effective planning practice. This objective rests on one key assumption: that a set of key sensibilities creates the right mindset for practice.

In an emotionally charged talk, MacArthur-winning activist Majora Carter details her fight for environmental justice in the South Bronx -- and shows how minority neighborhoods suffer most from flawed urban policy. A quiz, thought provoking question, and links for further study are provided to create a lesson around the 18-minute video. Educators may use the platform to easily "Flip" or create their own lesson for use with their students of any age or level.

A truly inter-disciplinary course, Housing and Land Use in Rapidly Urbanizing Regions reviews how law, economics, sociology, political science, and planning conceptualize urban land and property rights and uses cases to discuss what these different lenses illuminate and obscure. It also looks at how the social sciences might be informed by how design, cartography, and visual studies conceptualize space's physicality. This year's topics include land trusts for affordable housing, mixed-use in public space, and critical cartography.

This lesson gives students a first-hand opportunity to hear about the planning and effort it takes to build a highway through an oral history of a North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) resident engineer. Through his oral history, students will learn about "the largest single construction project in the history of the NCDOT." That project is also known as the I-26 corridor in Madison County, North Carolina. This lesson encourages students to think about the enormous impact of highways in our personal lives, and on North Carolina's economy, while recognizing how we take highways for granted.

Introduction to usage and impacts of information technologies on urban planning and communities. Literature review, guest speakers, and web surfing provide examples and issues that are debated in class and homework exercises. Includes examination of metropolitan information infrastructures, urban modeling and visualization, e-government, collaborative planning, and cyber communities. This seminar is an introduction to the usage and impacts of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on urban planning, the urban environment and communities. Students will explore how social relationships, our sense of community, the urban infrastructure, and planning practice have been affected by technological change. Literature reviews, guest speakers, and web surfing will provide examples and issues that are debated in class and homework exercises. We will examine metropolitan information infrastructures, urban modeling and visualization, e-government, collaborative planning, and cyber communities. Students will attend a regular Tuesday seminar and occasional seminars of invited speakers during lunchtime on Fridays or Mondays. During the past two decades, ICTs have become so pervasive and disruptive that their impact on urban planning and social relationships has begun to reach far beyond their immediate use as efficient bookkeeping and automation tools. This seminar will examine ICT impacts on our sense of community, urban planning practice, the meaning of 'place', and the nature of metropolitan governance. In each of the four areas, we will utilize readings, class discussion, guest lectures, and homework exercises to identify and critique key trends, relevant theories, and promising directions for research and professional practice.

Frameworks and Models for Technology and Policy students explore perspectives in the policy process -- agenda setting, problem definition, framing the terms of debate, formulation and analysis of options, implementation and evaluation of policy outcomes using frameworks including economics and markets, law, and business and management. Methods include cost/benefit analysis, probabilistic risk assessment, and system dynamics. Exercises for Technology and Policy students include developing skills to work on the interface between technology and societal issues; simulation exercises; case studies; and group projects that illustrate issues involving multiple stakeholders with different value structures, high levels of uncertainty, multiple levels of complexity; and value trade-offs that are characteristic of engineering systems. Emphasis on negotiation, team building and group dynamics, and management of multiple actors and leadership. This course explores perspectives in the policy process - agenda setting, problem definition, framing the terms of debate, formulation and analysis of options, implementation and evaluation of policy outcomes using frameworks including economics and markets, law, and business and management. Methods include cost/benefit analysis, probabilistic risk assessment, and system dynamics. Exercises include developing skills to work on the interface between technology and societal issues; simulation exercises; case studies; and group projects that illustrate issues involving multiple stakeholders with different value structures, high levels of uncertainty, multiple levels of complexity; and value trade-offs that are characteristic of engineering systems. Emphasis on negotiation, team building and group dynamics, and management of multiple actors and leadership.

Examines the evolving structure of cities and the way that cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas can be designed and developed. Guest speakers present cases, involving current projects, which illustrate the scope and methods of urban design practice. This is a class about how cities, suburbs, and metropolitan areas change. It is an introductory subject for undergraduates that examines both the evolving structure of the American metropolis and the ways that it can be designed and developed. Topics range from grand ideas proposed by single individuals to smaller more incremental processes carried out through collaboration by a variety of contending parties. You will see how cities and suburbs have been changed in the past and how you and others may help change them in the future.