This lesson embarks on an exploration of how America’s deep-rooted car culture emerged and its lasting impact on modern life. Students will understand the decline of early public transportation systems and how World War II catalyzed rapid technological advancements, leading to a shift in infrastructure and business priorities. They'll analyze how post-war economic prosperity fueled mass motorization, with cars becoming a status symbol for Americans. Three key drivers—post-WWII technological advancements, urban sprawl, and the rise of car culture—serve as a framework for understanding the U.S.'s car reliance. Through evidence-based analysis, students will then apply these concepts to case studies, deducing why cities remains so car-centric. They will consider factors such as climate, geography, political and economic resistance to change, and cultural values. Ultimately, the lesson challenges students to reflect on the sustainability of current transportation systems and explore potential solutions to create a more equitable and environmentally-friendly future.

Students learn about traffic lights and their importance in maintaining public safety and order. Using a Parallax® Basic Stamp 2 microcontroller, students work in teams on the engineering challenge to build a traffic light with a specific behavior. In the process, they learn about light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and how their use can save energy. Students also design their own requirements based on real-world observations as they learn about traffic safety and work towards an interesting goal within the realm of what is important in practice. Knowledge gained from the activity is directly transferrable to future activities, and skills learned are scalable to more ambitious class projects.

“Designing a dream city is easy. Rebuilding a living one takes imagination.”    -Jane Jacobs
This course examines the challenges that cities will face and strategies they can use to prepare for the impacts of climate change. Particular attention will be paid to the presence of global disparities, the needs of vulnerable populations and resource constrained locales, and the ways in which local government and community-based activities can achieve equitable levels of climate-readiness.

For many years, Cambridge, MA, as host to two major research universities, has been the scene of debates as to how best to meet the competing expectations of different stakeholders. Where there has been success, it has frequently been the result, at least in part, of inventive urban design proposals and the design and implementation of new institutional arrangements to accomplish those proposals. Where there has been failure it has often been explained by the inability - or unwillingness - of one stakeholder to accept and accommodate the expectations of another. The two most recent fall Urban Design Studios have examined these issues at a larger scale. In 2001 we looked at the possible patterns for growth and change in Cambridge, UK, as triggered by the plans of Cambridge University. And in 2002 we looked at these same issues along the length of the MIT ‘frontier’ in Cambridge, MA as they related to the development of MIT and the biotech research industry.
In the fall 2003 Urban Design Studio we propose to focus in on an area adjacent to Cambridgeport and the western end of the MIT campus, roughly centered on Fort Washington. Our goal is to discover the ways in which good urban form, an apt mix of activities, and effective institutional mechanisms might all be brought together in ways that respect shared expectations and reconcile competing expectations - perhaps in unexpected and adroit ways.

This studio discusses in great detail the design of urban environments, specifically in Providence, RI. It will propose strategies for change in large areas of cities, to be developed over time, involving different actors. Fitting forms into natural, man-made, historical, and cultural contexts; enabling desirable activity patterns; conceptualizing built form; providing infrastructure and service systems; guiding the sensory character of development: all are topics covered in the studio. The course integrates architecture and planning students in joint work and requires individual designs and planning guidelines as a final product.

Are you an urban planner, designer, policy maker or involved or interested in the creation of good living environments?

This course will broaden your scope and diversify your take on the field of urban planning and design. We will focus on a unique Dutch approach and analyze how it can help those involved with urban planning and design to improve the physical environment in relation to the public good it serves, including safety, wellbeing, sustainability and even beauty.

You will learn some of the basic traits of Dutch Urbanism, including its:

contextual approach;
balance between research and design;
simultaneous working on multiple scale levels.
You will practice with basic techniques in spatial analysis and design pertaining to these points. You will also carry out these activities in your own domestic environment.

This course is taught by the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU-Delft, ranked no. 4 in Architecture/Built Environment on the QS World University Rankings (2016).

All the material in this course is presented at entry level. But since the course has an integral perspective, combining planning and design aspects, it can still be relevant for trained professionals who feel they lack experience in either field.

This class presents an analysis of the development of housing models and their urban implications in Paris, London, and New York City from the seventeenth century to the present. The focus will be on three models: the French hotel, the London row house, and the New York City tenement and apartment building. Other topics covered will include twentieth-century housing reform movements and work by the London County Council, CIAM, and American public housing agencies.

This course examines the policy, politics, planning, and engineering of transportation systems in urban areas, with a special focus on the Boston area. It covers the role of the federal, state, and local government and the MPO, public transit in the era of the automobile, analysis of current trends and pattern breaks; analytical tools for transportation planning, traffic engineering, and policy analysis; the contribution of transportation to air pollution, social costs, and climate change; land use and transportation interactions, and more. Transportation sustainability is a central theme throughout the course, as well as consideration of if and how it is possible to resolve the tension between the three E’s (environment, economy, and equity). The goal of this course is to elicit discussion, stimulate independent thinking, and encourage students to understand and challenge the “conventional wisdom” of transportation planning.

The course examines the causes and effects of rapid urbanization in developing countries. Using case studies from the world’s four major developing regions, including (among others) Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Managua, Singapore, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Kabul, Beirut, Cairo, Kinshasa, Cape Town and Johannesburg, it explores the economic and political dynamics that grease the wheels of contemporary patterns of growth. In addition to examining both local and transnational forces that drive contemporary urbanization, the course focuses on key issues that emerge in rapidly growing cities of the developing world, ranging from growing income inequality and socio-economic exclusion, environmental challenges, and rising violence. Class sessions are discussion-based and focus on a critical analysis of the arguments presented in the readings.

TED Studies, created in collaboration with Wiley, are curated video collections — supplemented by rich educational materials — for students, educators and self-guided learners. In Ecofying Cities, speakers reveal ideas about sustainable development (and redevelopment) that aren't all about setting limits, going without or preparing for the worst. Rather, they find solutions in resourceful, hopeful, beautiful communities.

This class uses lab exercises and a workshop setting to help students develop a solid understanding of the planning and public management uses of geographic information systems (GIS). The goals are to help students: acquire technical skills in the use of GIS software; acquire qualitative methods skills in data and document gathering, analyzing information, and presenting results; and investigate the potential and practicality of GIS technologies in a typical planning setting and evaluate possible applications.
The workshop teaches GIS techniques and basic database management at a level that extends somewhat beyond the basic thematic mapping and data manipulation skills included in the MCP core classes (viz. 11.204 and 11.220). Instead of focusing on one thematic map of a single variable, students will concentrate on more open-ended planning questions that invite spatial analysis but will require judgment and exploration to select relevant data and mapping techniques; involve mixing and matching new, local data with extracts from official records (such as census data, parcel data and regional employment and population forecasts); utilize spatial analysis techniques such as buffering, address matching, overlays; use other modeling and visualization techniques beyond thematic mapping; and raise questions about the skills, strategy, and organizational support needed to sustain such analytic capability within a variety of local and regional planning settings.
Students seeking graduate credit should enroll in the subject 11.520; undergraduates should enroll in the subject 11.188. The subjects meet together and have nearly identical content.
ArcGIS/ArcMap/ArcInfo Graphical User Interface is the intellectual property of ESRI and is used herein with permission. Copyright © ESRI. All rights reserved.