This course focuses on the tools and programs available to economic development practitioners to address capital needs for businesses and economic development projects. It provides an overview of private capital markets and financing sources to understand capital market imperfections that constrain economic development, business accounting, financial statement analysis, federal economic development programs, and public finance tools. The course covers policies and program models, including revolving loan funds, guarantee programs, venture capital funds, bank holding companies, community development loan funds and credit unions, micro-enterprise funds, and the Community Reinvestment Act. The objective of this course is to provide students with a comprehensive overview of economic development finance practice in the United States, and to develop a knowledge base and skills to either be a development finance practitioner, or apply economic development finance approaches to other fields of planning and community development.

This course focuses on the physical and economic renewal of urban neighborhood Main Streets by combining classroom work with an applied class project. The course content covers four broad areas:

an overview of the causes for urban business district decline, the challenges faced in revitalization and the type of revitalization strategies employed;
the physical and economic development planning tools used to understand and assess urban Main Streets from physical design and economic development perspectives;
the policies, interventions, and investments used to foster urban commercial revitalization; and
the formulation of a revitalization plan for an urban commercial district.

Revitalizing Urban Main Streets focuses on the physical and economic renewal of urban neighborhood Main Streets by combining classroom work with an applied class project. The course content covers three broad areas:

an overview of the causes for urban business district decline, the challenges faced in revitalization and the type of revitalization strategies employed;
the physical and economic development planning tools used to understand and assess urban Main Streets from physical design and economic development perspectives; and
the policies, interventions, and investments used to foster urban commercial revitalization.

The course has dual goals: to explore the integration of economic and physical development interventions in ways that reinforce commercial district revitalization efforts, and to apply this knowledge through the development of a formal neighborhood commercial revitalization plan for a client business district.

This course focuses on the physical and economic renewal of urban neighborhood Main Streets by combining classroom work with an applied class project. The course content covers four broad areas:

An overview of the causes for urban business district decline, the challenges faced in revitalization and the type of revitalization strategies employed;
The physical and economic development planning tools used to understand and assess urban Main Streets from physical design and economic development perspectives;
The policies, interventions, and investments used to foster urban commercial revitalization; and
The formulation of a revitalization plan for an urban commercial district.

This intensive and brief 4-day seminar, taught during MIT's Independent Activities Period in January, uses a case set in Hartford, Vermont to introduce economic development planning skills to students in the Master in City Planning (MCP) Degree Program. It introduces analytical tools that are used to assess local economic development conditions, issues, and opportunities as part of formulating economic development plans. The course is designed to provide MCP students with skills needed for applied economic development planning work in other courses, particularly Economic Development Planning (11.438) and Revitalizing Urban Main Streets (11.439).

The Springfield Studio is a practicum course that focuses on the economic, programmatic and social renewal of an urban community in Springfield, Massachusetts by combining classroom work with an applied class project. The course content covers the areas of neighborhood economic development and the related analysis and planning tools used to understand and assess urban conditions from an economic and community development perspective.

This course explores the application of environmental and economic development planning, policy and management approaches to urban neighborhood community development. Through an applied service learning approach, the course requires students to prepare a sustainable development plan for a community-based non-profit organization. Through this client-based planning project, students will have the opportunity to test how sustainable development concepts and different economic and environmental planning approaches can be applied to advance specific community goals within the constraints of specific neighborhoods and community organizations.