In analyzing fiscal issues, conventional public finance approaches focus mainly on taxation and public spending. Policymakers and practitioners rarely explore solutions by examining the fundamental problem: the failure of interested parties to act collectively to internalize the positive externalities generated by public goods. Public finance is merely one of many possible institutional arrangements for assigning the rights and responsibilities to public goods consumption. This system is currently under stress because of the financial crisis. The first part of the class will focus on collective action and its connection with local public finance. The second part will explore alternative institutional arrangements for mediating collective action problems associated with the provision of local public goods.
The objective of the seminar is to broaden the discussion of local public finance by incorporating collective action problems into the discourse. This inclusion aims at exploring alternative institutional arrangements for financing local public services in the face of severe economic downturn. Applications of emerging ideas to the provision of public health, education, and natural resource conservation will be discussed.

This is a seminar course that explores the history of selected features of the physical environment of urban America. Among the features considered are parks, cemeteries, tenements, suburbs, zoos, skyscrapers, department stores, supermarkets, and amusement parks. The course gives students experience in working with primary documentation sources through its selection of readings and class discussions. Students then have the opportunity to apply this experience by researching their own historical questions and writing a term paper.

This short film uses graphics to provide an introduction to the physical causes of earthquakes, and to explore how the way we build and manage our cities determines their vulnerability to a seismic strike.

It was created with the UK GCSE and A' Level curricula in mind.

This series looks at the Oxford Martin School's academics and how their research is making a difference to our global future. The series will be of interest to people who are concerned about the future for the planet, how civilisation will adapt to emerging problems and issues such as climate change, over population, increased urbanisation of populations and the creation of vaccines to fight against future pandemics. The Oxford Martin School academics explain their various research topics in an accessible and thoughtful way and try to find practical solutions to these issues.

Urban design, inequality and segregation are strongly connected.

Cities around the world, from the Global South to the Global North, are facing a rise in inequality and socio-economic segregation. The wealthy are increasingly concentrating in the most attractive urban areas and poverty is spreading to the suburbs. Rising levels of segregation have major consequences for the social sustainability of cities and leads to unequal life opportunities depending on where in the city you live.

In this course, aimed at a broad range of professionals, from urban planners and architects to geographers, you will learn what the main drivers and indicators of urban inequality and segregation are, using examples from cities from all over the world. You will learn how segregation is measured, how to interpret the results of the analyses of segregation and how to relate these insights to urban design. With this knowledge, you will be able to analyze how these issues may be affecting your local environment.

Additionally, we will present some historical examples of how urban design has played a role shaping spatial inequality and segregation in a selection of case study cities. This will help you to get a better understanding of how urban design can reduce spatial inequality and segregation.

The course is taught by the editors of the new SpringerOpen book “Urban socio-economic segregation and income inequality. A global perspective” and senior experts from the Urban Design section of TU Delft, which is ranked number 2 in the QS World University Rankings in the field of Architecture.

Using film as a lens to explore and interpret various aspects of the urban experience in both the U.S. and abroad, this course presents a survey of important developments in urbanism from 1900 to the present day, including changes in technology, bureaucracy, and industrialization; immigration and national identity; race, class, gender, and economic inequality; politics, conformity, and urban anomie; and planning, development, private property, displacement, sprawl, environmental degradation, and suburbanization.

City to City, as a class, will jump into the complexity of planning in New Orleans, a post-disaster city. City-to-City will ask how a post-disaster city grapple with its ideas of identity, what it is, who it represents, and how it projects its sense of self to residences, businesses, tourists, and to the outside world. In considering its people, how do city planners think about who lives where and why? At the same time, how can city planners celebrate a city’s history and its culture and how can these elements be woven into reconstruction? Students will travel from Cambridge to New Orleans over Spring Break to meet and consult with their alumni clients, and continue to work on projects.

This course covers approaches to research and evaluation in the planning field, for those preparing to write 1st-year doctoral and other research papers. Topics include narrowing down research interests, using quantitative and qualitative techniques complementarily, and interviewing and other fieldwork challenges. The course uses a seminar-type format in which readings, class discussions, and assignments are built around (1) generic themes that run across the research interests and paper topics of students in the class, and (2) lessons about methodology to be learned from the case comparison studies assigned.

In this activity, students will ask their partner questions to create an appropriate schedule of activities. Students will describe their daily activities and routines. Students will learn how to describe time, activities, and days of the week. They will also learn how to ask questions regarding time and activities.

This is an advanced seminar that will analyze the effectiveness of development and planning theories from the perspective of practitioners who implement projects and policies based on such theories. The ultimate goal is to create new planning sensibilities, which theorize from practice, not the other way around.

In this class we will examine how the idea of the city has been “translated” by artists, architects, and other diverse disciplines. We will consider how collaborations between artists and architects might provide opportunities for rethinking / redesigning urban spaces. The class will look specifically at planned cities like Brasilia, Las Vegas, Canberra, and Celebration and compare such tabula rasa designs with the redesign of recyclable urban spaces demonstrated in projects such as Ground Zero, Barcelona 2004, and Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway. While the course will involve some reading and discussion, coursework will focus largely on the students’ own projects / interventions that should evolve over the course of the semester.  Of the two weekly class meetings, one will be a group discussion or lecture with the whole class and visiting guests, and the other will be an individual meeting between the student and the instructor to discuss his or her work for the class, including the final project.

This seminar focuses on downtowns in U.S. cities from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. Emphasis will be placed on downtown as an idea, place, and cluster of interests; on the changing character of downtown; and on recent efforts to rebuild it. Subjects to be considered will include subways, skyscrapers, highways, urban renewal, and retail centers. The focus will be on readings, discussions, and individual research projects.

Sustainability lives within the people we know and places we visitThe book consists of two parts: Champions of Sustainability and Sustainable Innovations in Africa. The former focuses on individuals who are renowned for their efforts to further the cause of sustainability in their respective areas of expertise while the latter highlights cities in Africa that face a challenge pertaining to sustainability, and the potential solutions they could implement to solve said crises.

The students in CIVE230: Engineering and Sustainable Development go beyond the course content by learning from the world around us and from each other. This e-book has been the project experience that allowed students to explore topics of their choice in cities of their choice, and has become a souvenir from the course!

Trees within a city can help reduce urban heat, control stormwater, and provide habitat to local wildlife. As climate conditions change, a Chicago group is working to enhance its urban forest so that the city can continue to receive these benefits.

In this activity, students will discuss giving and receiving directions, as well as talk about events within a community.

In this activity, students will discuss giving and receiving directions, as well as talk about events within a community.

Students will be randomly assigned groups with the following cities: Berlin, Wien, und Zurich. They will be given a budget and need to create an itinerary for a week-long stay.

Students will practice planning a trip to a German city. They will need to follow a budget when planning their activities.

Students will discuss the differences between German and US cities, foods, fashion and more. They will also discuss differences in cultural etiquette and customs.