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Course 11: Urban Studies and Planning |
 | | | Undergraduate: 11.00-11.199 plus UROP, THU, THT | | | Graduate: 11.20-11.299 | | | Graduate: 11.30-11.999 plus THG | | |  |
Master's Core Subjects11.200 Gateway: Urban Studies and Planning 1
 ( )
Prereq: None Units: 4-1-7 
Introduces the theory and practice of planning and urban studies through exploration of the history of the field, case studies, and criticisms of traditional practice. D. Wendel 11.201 Gateway: Urban Studies and Planning 2
( )Not offered regularly; consult department Prereq: 11.200 Units: 4-1-7
Builds on 11.200 by exploring in more detail contemporary planning tools and techniques, as well as case studies of planning and urban studies practice. G. Carolini, C. Zegras 11.202 Planning Economics
(); second half of term
Prereq: 11.203 Units: 3-0-3 Begins Mar 31. Lecture: TR9.30-11 (37-212) Recitation: R3 (10-401) or R4 (10-401) or F9 (9-450) or F12 (9-450)
Students use economic theory tools acquired in 11.203 to understand the mutual processes of individual action and structural constraint and investigate crises in search of opportunities for mitigation and reparation. Investigates a variety of structural crises from throughout the realms of planning, such as: capitalism, climate change, and (in)action; white supremacy, segregation, and gentrification; colonialism, informality, and infrastructure; autocentricity and other legacies of the built environment. Sebastian Olascoaga No textbook information available 11.203 Microeconomics
(); first half of term
Prereq: None Units: 3-0-3 Ends Mar 21. Lecture: TR9.30-11 (37-212) Recitation: R3 (10-401) or R4 (10-401) or F9-12 (9-450) or F12 (9-450)
Students develop a suite of tools from economic theory to understand the mutual processes of individual action and structural constraint. Students apply these tools to human interaction and social decision-making. Builds an understanding of producer theory from the collaborative possibilities and physical constraints that unfold as production is scaled up. Presents consumer theory as the process of individuals doing the best for themselves, their families, and their communities -- subject to the sociostructural constraints under which they operate. Considers alternative frameworks of social welfare, with a specific focus on marginalization and crisis, as well as common policy interventions and their implications under different constructions of welfare. Sebastian Olascoaga No textbook information available 11.204[J] People and the Planet: Environmental Histories and Engineering
()Not offered regularly; consult department (Same subject as IDS.524[J]) (Subject meets with 11.004[J], STS.033[J]) Prereq: None Units: 3-3-6
Explores historical and cultural aspects of complex environmental problems and engineering approaches to sustainable solutions. Introduces quantitative analyses and methodological tools to understand environmental issues that have human and natural components. Demonstrates concepts through a series of historical and cultural analyses of environmental challenges and their engineering responses. Builds writing, quantitative modeling, and analytical skills in assessing environmental systems problems and developing engineering solutions. Through environmental data gathering and analysis, students engage with the challenges and possibilities of engineering in complex, interacting systems, and investigate plausible, symbiotic, systems-oriented solutions. Students taking graduate version complete additional analysis of reading assignments and a more in-depth and longer final paper. Staff 11.205 Introduction to Spatial Analysis and GIS
(, ); first half of term
Prereq: None Units: 2-2-2 Credit cannot also be received for 11.188 Ends Mar 21. Lecture: MW2.30-4 (9-354) Recitation: M EVE (4.30-6.30 PM) (9-554) or T EVE (4.30-6.30 PM) (9-554) or W EVE (4.30-6.30 PM) (9-554)
An introduction to Geographic Information Systems (GIS): a tool for visualizing and analyzing data representing locations and their attributes. GIS is invaluable for planners, scholars, and professionals who shape cities and a political instrument with which activists advocate for change. Class includes exercises to make maps, query databases, and analyze spatial data. Because maps and data are never neutral, the class incorporates discussions of power, ethics, and data throughout as part of a reflective practice. Limited enrollment; preference to first-year MCP students. Fall: E. Huntley, C. Cong Spring: C. D'Ignazio, E. Huntley No textbook information available 11.206 Poverty and Economic Security
 ()
(Subject meets with 11.006) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9
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. A. Glasmeier 11.220 Quantitative Reasoning and Statistical Methods for Planning I
(); second half of term
Prereq: Permission of instructor Units: 3-0-3
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. Restricted to MCP students. M. Arcaya Department-wide Subjects11.222 Introduction to Critical Qualitative Methods
(); first half of term
Prereq: None Units: 3-0-3
Introduces qualitative methods as an approach to critical inquiry in urban planning research and practice. Emphasizes the importance of historical context, place-specificity, and the experiences and views of individuals as ways of knowing relationships of power and privilege between people, in place, and over time. Explores a range of critical qualitative methods including those used in archival, interview, observational, visual, and case study analysis. E. James 11.228[J] Collectives: New Forms of Sharing
()Not offered regularly; consult department (Same subject as 4.229[J]) Prereq: Permission of instructor Units: 3-0-9 URL: https://architecture.mit.edu/classes
Considers ways in which collaborative approaches to living can reshape architecture and the city. Students investigate historic and present spatial models and platforms (digital and physical) of collaboration and sharing. Explores how economic, political and social transformations, such as co-ownership, community-based exchange, digital collectives, and self-organization, can lead to new programs, typologies, designs, and new relationships between user, designer, and developer. Limited to 15. Consult R. Segal 11.233 Research Design for Policy Analysis and Planning
()
Prereq: Permission of instructor Units: 3-0-9 [P/D/F]
Develops skills in research design for policy analysis and planning. Emphasizes the logic of the research process and its constituent elements. Topics include philosophy of science, question formulation, hypothesis generation and theory construction, data collection techniques (e.g. experimental, survey, interview), ethical issues in research, and research proposal preparation. Limited to doctoral students in Course 11. G. Carolini, F. Siddiqi 11.234 Making Sense: Qualitative Methods for Designers and Planners
()
Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9 Lecture: M2-5 (9-450)
Surveys uses of qualitative methods and social theory in urban design and planning research and practice. Topics include observing environments, physical traces, and environmental behavior; asking questions; focused interviews; standardized questionnaires; use of written archival materials; use of visual materials, including photographs, new media, and maps; case studies; and comparative methods. Emphasizes use of each of these skills to collect and make sense of qualitative data in community and institutional settings. E. James Textbooks (Spring 2025) 11.236 Participatory Action Research (PAR)
()
Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9
Introduces students to participatory action research (PAR), an approach to research and inquiry that enables communities to examine and address consequential societal problems. Explores theoretical and practical questions at the heart of partnerships between applied social scientists and community partners. Focus includes the history of PAR and action research; debates regarding PAR as a form of applied social science; and practical, political, and ethical questions in the practice of PAR. Guides students through an iterative process for developing their own personal theories of practice. Covers co-designing and co-conducting research with community partners at various stages of the research process .Examines actual cases in which PAR-like methods have been used with greater or lesser success; and interaction with community members, organizations, and individuals who have been involved in PAR collaborations. K. Kaeufer 11.238[J] Ethics of Intervention
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(Same subject as 21A.409[J]) Prereq: Permission of instructor Units: 3-0-9
An historical and cross-cultural study of the logics and practices of intervention: the ways that individuals, institutions, and governments identify conditions of need or states of emergency within and across borders that require a response. Examines when a response is viewed as obligatory, when is it deemed unnecessary, and by whom; when the intercession is considered fulfilled; and the rationales or assumptions that are employed in assessing interventions. Theories of the state, globalization, and humanitarianism; power, policy, and institutions; gender, race, and ethnicity; and law, ethics, and morality are examined. E. C. James 11.239 The City in Film
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(Subject meets with 11.139) Prereq: Permission of instructor Units: 2-2-5
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. Films vary from year to year but always include a balance of classics from the history of film, an occasional experimental/avant-garde film, and a number of more recent, mainstream movies. Students taking undergraduate version complete writing assignments that focus on observation, analysis, and the essay, and give an oral presentation. E. Glenn 11.240[J] Walking the City
() 
(Same subject as 4.242[J]) Prereq: None Units: 2-0-10
Students investigate how landscapes and cities shape them — and vice versa — by examining the literature of walking and the environments in which they move. Through extensive walking, students explore the city to analyze its design and varied histories, drawing on cartography, art, sociology, and memory to create fresh narratives. Students write architecture and city criticism, design "story maps," and are invited to walk as an art practice. Emphasis is on the relationship between the human body and freedom, or a lack thereof, and between pathways and the complex emotions that emerge from traversing them. Limited to 12. Preference to Course 4 and 11 graduate students who have completed at least two semesters. G. Cadogan 11.243 Research Methods in Global Health and Development
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(Subject meets with 11.143) Prereq: None Units: 3-3-6
Provides training for students to critically analyze the relationship between "health" and "development." Draws upon the theory and methods of medical anthropology, social medicine, public health, and development to track how culture, history, and political economy influence health and disease in global communities. Students work in teams to formulate research questions, and collect and analyze qualitative data in clinical and community settings in the greater Boston area, in order to design effective development interventions aimed at reducing health disparities in the US and abroad. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. E. C. James 11.244[J] Race, History, and the Built Environment
()
(Same subject as STS.424[J]) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9
Examines how the development of the built environment produces and reproduces conceptions of race - sociobiological theories of human difference. Using historical and cross-cultural cases, tracks the social and political lives of material objects, infrastructures, technologies, and architectures using projects of settler colonialism, nation-building, community development and planning, and in post-conflict and post-disaster settings. Analyzes social theories of race, place, space, and materiality; power, identity, and embodiment; and memory, death, and haunting. Explores how conceptions of belonging, citizenship, and exclusion are represented and designed spatially through analysis of examples, such as the appropriation of land for infrastructure programs, the erasure and commemoration of heritage in public spaces, and the use of the built environment to impose colonial ideologies. Limited to 14 students. Erica James 11.245[J] DesignX Entrepreneurship
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(Same subject as 4.245[J]) Prereq: Permission of instructor Units: 4-0-2
Students in teams accepted to the MITdesignX accelerator begin work on their ventures in this intense two-week bootcamp. Participants identify the needs and problems that demonstrate the demand for their innovative technology, policy, products, and/or services. They research and investigate various markets and stakeholders pertinent to their ventures, and begin to test their ideas and thesis in real-world interviews and interactions. Subject presented in workshop format, giving teams the chance to jump-start their ventures together with a cohort of people working on ideas that span the realm of design, planning real estate, and the human environment. Registration limited to students accepted to the MITdesignX accelerator in the fall. S. Gronfeldt, G. Rosenzweig No textbook information available 11.246[J] DesignX Accelerator
()
(Same subject as 4.246[J]) Prereq: Permission of instructor Units: 2-4-6 Lecture: F9-1 (9-451) +final
Students continue to work in their venture teams to advance innovative ideas, products, and services oriented to design, planning, and the human environment. Presented in a workshop format with supplementary lectures. Teams are matched with external mentors for additional support in business and product development. At the end of the term, teams pitch their ventures to an audience from across the school and MIT, investors, industry, and cities. Registration limited to students accepted to the MITdesignX accelerator in the fall. S. Gronfeldt, G. Rosenzweig No textbook information available 11.250 Transportation Research Design
(, )
Prereq: Permission of instructor Units: 2-0-1 [P/D/F] Lecture: F9.30-11 (9-255)
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 learn by mimicking and learn by doing, and design and execute their own transportation research. Limited to 20. Fall: J. Zhao Spring: J. Zhao No textbook information available 11.251 Frontier of Transportation Research
(, )
Prereq: None Units: 1-0-2 [P/D/F] Lecture: F12 (9-255)
Surveys the frontier of transportation research offered by 12 MIT faculty presenting their latest findings, ideas, and innovations. Students write weekly memos to reflect on these talks, make connections to their own research, and give short presentations. Fall: J. Zhao Spring: A. Hudson, J. Zhao No textbook information available 11.252[J] Design and Development of Games for Learning
()
(Same subject as CMS.863[J]) (Subject meets with 11.127[J], CMS.590[J]) Prereq: None Units: 3-6-3 Lecture: MW11-12.30 (E25-117) Lab: TBA
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. In developing their own games, students examine what and how people learn from them (including field testing of products), as well as how games can be implemented in educational settings. All levels of computer experience welcome. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. J. Haas No textbook information available 11.255 Negotiation and Dispute Resolution in the Public Sector
()
Prereq: None Units: 4-0-8  Subject Cancelled
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. L. Susskind 11.256[J] Revealing the City
()
(Same subject as 4.256[J]) Prereq: None Units: 2-0-10
Through study of the essay as a literary form and mode of writing, students explore the promise and perils of the variegated city. Participants create artful narratives by examining how various literary forms — poetry, fiction, and essay — illuminate our understanding of cities. Special emphasis is on the writer as the reader's advocate, with the goal of writing with greater creativity and sophistication for specialized and general-interest audiences. Limited to 12. Preference to Course 4 and 11 graduate students who have completed at least two semesters. G. Cadogan 11.257 China's Growth: Political Economy, Business, and Urbanization
(); second half of term
(Subject meets with 11.157) Prereq: None Units: 3-0-3
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. Discusses how to understand China's booming real estate market, and how Chinese firms operate to attain their success, whether through hard-working entrepreneurship or political connections with the government. Explores whether the top-down urban and industrial policy interventions improve efficiency or cause misallocation problems, and whether the Chinese political system in an enabler of Chinese growth or a potential impediment to the country's future growth prospects. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Staff 11.258 Sustainable Urbanization Research Seminar
()
Prereq: None Units: 2-0-1 [P/D/F]
Reviews the seminal as well as latest research on the driving forces of urbanization, real estate markets, urban sustainability in both developed and developing economies. Examines the tensions as well as synergies between urbanization and sustainability, and designs and evaluates policies and business strategies that can enhance the synergies while reduce the tensions. Covers various research topics under the umbrella of urbanization under three modules (sustainable urbanization; sustainable real estate; urbanization in emerging economies) where students study the initiation of an idea to its publication, including but not limited to, analyzing, framing, writing and critiquing as parts of the process. Sessions are organized as a semi-structured dialogue. S. Zheng 11.259 Entrepreneurial Negotiation
(); partial termNot offered regularly; consult department (Subject meets with 11.159) Prereq: None Units: 1-3-2 [P/D/F]
Combines online weekly face-to-face negotiation exercises and in-person lectures designed to empower budding entrepreneurs with negotiation techniques to protect and increase the value of their ideas, deal with ego and build trust in relationships, and navigate entrepreneurial bargaining under constraints of economic uncertainty and complex technical considerations. Students must complete scheduled weekly assignments, including feedback memos to counterpart negotiators, and meet on campus with the instructor to discuss and reflect on their experiences with the course. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. S. Dinnar 11.260 Sustainable Development and Institutions
()Not offered regularly; consult department Prereq: None Units: 3-0-9
Explores the theory and application of the principles of sustainable development as they relate to organizational change management, decision-making processes, goal setting methodology and solution development. Leverages the MIT campus as a living laboratory to gain unique insight into the change management and solution development process. Limited to 18. Staff 11.263[J] Urban Last-Mile Logistics
(); second half of term
(Same subject as 1.263[J], SCM.293[J]) Prereq: SCM.254 or permission of instructor Units: 2-0-4
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. Discusses the most relevant traditional and the most promising innovating operating models for urban last-mile distribution. Introduces applications of the essential quantitative methods for the strategic design and tactical planning of urban last-mile distribution systems, including optimization and simulation. Covers basic facility location problems, network design problems, single- and multi-echelon vehicle routing problems, as well as associated approximation techniques. Requires intermediate coding skills in Python and independent quantitative analyses Python. M. Winkenbach 11.265 Topics on Housing Finance and Social Equity
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| | | Undergraduate: 11.00-11.199 plus UROP, THU, THT | | | Graduate: 11.20-11.299 | | | Graduate: 11.30-11.999 plus THG | | | |
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