Subjects

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 jus-tice. 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 lec-tures, 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 In-digenous governments.

The motivating idea for this course is that a critical reading of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities can facilitate a deeper understanding and appreciation of cities and the urban planning and policy making process. Asking the existential question “What’s a City?”, we will use Invisible Cities and a variety of weekly readings to attempt to contemplate answer(s) to that question, and illuminate the process of urban planning and policymaking, with a focus on the transportation sector. The course is designed to help each of us (instructor included) think more clearly and precisely about cities, the important role of urban renewal and its role in the post-pandemic 21st century context, and the ways we approach the necessary task of urban (and transit) adaptation. We will use Boston as a case study to examine the planning process, and compare the process and outcomes of mid-20th century urban renewal with the ways cities are dealing with post- pandemic renewal.

Urban analytics draws upon statistics, visualization, and computation to better understand and ultimately shape cities. This course emphasizes telling stories about cities and neighborhoods covering a set of fundamental concepts of descriptive approaches, quantitative and spatial analysis in R, and principles of reproducible data analysis. Students learn to communicate the results of visualization and analysis for use in decision-making and policy development and to critique those processes.

The motivating idea for this course is that a critical reading of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities can facilitate a deeper understanding and appreciation of cities and the urban planning and policy making process. Asking the existential question “What’s a City?”, we will use Invisible Cities and a variety of weekly readings to attempt to contemplate answer(s) to that question, and illuminate the process of urban planning and policymaking, with a focus on the transportation sector. The course is designed to help each of us (instructor included) think more clearly and precisely about cities, the important role of urban renewal and its role in the post-pandemic 21st century context, and the ways we approach the necessary task of urban (and transit) adaptation. We will use Boston as a case study to examine the planning process, and compare the process and outcomes of mid-20th century urban renewal with the ways cities are dealing with post- pandemic renewal.

Urban analytics draws upon statistics, visualization, and computation to better understand and ultimately shape cities. This course emphasizes telling stories about cities and neighborhoods covering a set of fundamental concepts of descriptive approaches, quantitative and spatial analysis in R, and principles of reproducible data analysis. Students learn to communicate the results of visualization and analysis for use in decision-making and policy development and to critique those processes.

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 class offers incoming MCP students interested in urban design the chance to explore a range of contemporary issues facing urban design practice and theory. The course begins with an overview of classic urban design theories and asks how these theories hold up in light of contemporary urban design challenges. Guest speakers will include CDD faculty as well as outside practitioners working on current projects or research illustrating scope and methods of urban design theory and practice, ranging from affordable housing to climate change to adapting to rapid technological changes wrought by platform economies, ubiquitous mobile phone usage, and now AI, as well as a series of discussions focused on international urban design. Intended for those seeking an introduction to fundamental knowledge of theory and praxis in city design and development.
First class is September 23

Challenges emerging from urban development appear reducible to conflicts between two groups: developers vs. neighbors, landlords vs. tenants, gentrifiers vs. existing residents, wealthy and socially empowered groups vs. those they exclude. In all cases, there is a missing third group, whether it is the residents who will live in new development, the homeowners who neither rent from nor to another, or the capitalists profiting from gentrification or exclusion. Class relations at the nexus of urban development are typically tripartite, with capitalist and state elites atop the hierarchy, a middle class of dominant residents, and a lower class of marginalized residents. Relations between and among these groups feature shifting alliances, and collaboration is often tacit rather than explicit. To get a handle on these relations, this course will augment theory and narratives of urban development with readings on theories of racial capitalism, especially those of W.E.B. Du Bois and Cedric Robinson. Students will leave this reading-heavy course with (1) an introductory grounding in classic theoretical accounts of urban development and racial capitalism, (2) a grasp on how the insights of the latter can be brought to bear on the former, and (3) a sense of how housing may be a key to understanding the reproduction of a White Middle Class.

This class is being offered as a special subject for fall 2024, normally offered as 11.477.

Examines efforts in developing and advanced nations and regions. Examines key issues in the current and future development of urban energy systems, such as technology, use, behavior, regulation, climate change, and lack of access or energy poverty. Case studies on a diverse sampling of cities explore how prospective technologies and policies can be implemented. Includes intensive group research projects, discussion, and debate.

This summer urban design workshop is part of a historic urban design collaboration and student exchange between MIT and Tsinghua University in Beijing, started in 1985. The 2024 workshop will focus on adaptive reuse of industrial heritage in Tangshan. 

Tangshan is located in the Hebei Province, about an hour east of Beijing on high-speed rail. With an urban population of 3.6 million residents (2020) and provincial population of 7.7, Tangshan has historically been China’s largest steel-production city. In the latter part of the 20th century, its economy has diversified to manufacturing machinery, motor-vehicles, petroleum products and cement. It also boasts significant textile and pottery manufacturing. 

Today, as the Chinese economy transitions from a heavy manufacturing base to a more service and knowledge-based economy, the future of cities like Tangshan face uncertainty and call for a different economic, social and natural habitat. This workshop will investigate ecological approaches to reusing industrial heritage sites, community-oriented and people-centric city design, modernization of historic panel housing districts and their neighborhood amenities, and possible pathways to shift urban mobility towards more sustainable modes. We invite a joint group of MIT and Tsinghua graduate students to examine Tangshan’s present transformational challenges and to propose urban designs, plans and policies to address the city’s and its communities’ development challenges. 

During our trip to China from June 15 to 28th, we will collaborate with Tsinghua students and faculty (Prof. Liu Jian) to understand the challenges faced by Tangshan, and spend time in both Beijing and Tangshan. Travel and accommodation will be fully funded by MIT. Participating students must be present in the workshop throughout the whole travel period and are expected to work and engage in site visits and tours during full 8-hour days for two work weeks, including one weekend in the middle of the trip.

This under/graduate-level reading seminar focuses on the critical intersections between Indigenous knowledge systems, water resources management, and environmental jus-tice. 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 lec-tures, 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 In-digenous governments.

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."

Students will gain experience processing, visualizing, and analyzing urban mobility data, with emphasis on models and performance metrics for scheduled, fixed-route transit services. The evolution of urban public transportation modes and services, as well as interaction with emerging on-demand services, will be covered. Instructors and guest lecturers will discuss methods for data collection and analysis, institutional and policy constraints related to transit planning in the United States, and operational considerations for various public transportation modes. In assignments, students will practice using spatial, database, network analysis, and other software to shape recommendations for transit that effectively meets the future needs of cities. This subject will use both video and in-person lectures as well as group work sessions. Familiarity with basic data analytics using Python or R, software versioning (e.g. via GitHub), and spatial analysis (e.g. GIS) will be helpful.

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.