Course examines the role good design and planning plays in adding value to real estate. Using a comparative case approach, the course will help students develop an understanding of how developer decision-making in regards to specific projects and their final built form is influenced by locational considerations, financial constraints, broader market dynamics, public perceptions of the project, and the legal framework.

Varies annually to meet the needs of graduate students.

A series of one-credit short courses, whose topics vary from semester to semester.

Individual study directed by a faculty member. Prerequisite: Planning faculty approval of topic.

Explores methods beyond the conventional town-hall meeting to gather insights from communities on planning issues. Topics will include more traditional methods of qualitative research such as focus groups, interviews, charrettes, participatory action research, and scenario planning, as well as strategies like asset mapping, visual preference surveys, games, art-based visioning, participatory budgeting.

Applies quantitative skills to the planning process: analyzes decision situations and develops precise languages communicating the quantitative dimensions of planning problems. Includes lectures, case studies, and applied assignments addressing statistical methods, survey methods, census data analysis, program and plan evaluation, and emerging methods used by planners.

This course is an introduction to the basic legal frameworks for regulating land use in the United States.  Topics to be covered include zoning & comprehensive planning; the constitutional & statutory rights of landowners & developers to challenge government action; the rights of neighbors; legal constraints on zoning changes by local governments; public financing of local land use development; discriminatory land use controls; eminent domain; and state & federal housing & homebuilding programs.

Topical offerings in planning.

This class begins with the premise that contact with nature is essential to modern life.The class will examine the evidence for why nature in important,and the many creative ways in which cities can plan for,and design-in nature, and foster meaningful and everyday connections with the natural world.

This lecture course focuses on cities as centers of cultural, social, and artistic activity. It considers how we define cities, the forces that create and sustain them, and what makes them culturally distinctive. It looks at several cities at their moments of cultural, political, and architectural glory: Istanbul in the 16thcentury, London in the late 17th and 18th centuries, Paris in the 19th century, New York in the 20th century, and Shanghai in the 21st century.