The studio will focus on the district of Gaoming, located in the northwest of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) - the fastest growing and most productive region of China. The District has recently completed a planning effort in which several design institutes and a Hong Kong planning firm prepared ideas for a new central area near the river. The class will complement these efforts by focusing on planning and design options on the waterfront of the proposed new district and ways of integrating water/hydrological factors into all aspects and land uses of a modern city (residential, commercial, industrial) - including watershed and natural ecosystem protection, economic and recreational activities, transportation, and tourism.

For the first time in history, the global demand for freshwater is overtaking its supply in many parts of the world. The U.N. predicts that by 2025, more than half of the countries in the world will be experiencing water stress or outright shortages. Lack of water can cause disease, food shortages, starvation, migrations, political conflict, and even lead to war. Models of cooperation, both historic and contemporary, show the way forward. The first half of the course details the multiple facets of the water crisis. Topics include water systems, water transfers, dams, pollution, climate change, scarcity, water conflict/cooperation, food security, and agriculture. The second half of the course describes innovative solutions: Adaptive technologies and adaptation through policy, planning, management, economic tools, and finally, human behaviors required to preserve this precious and imperiled resource. Several field trips to water/wastewater/biosolids reuse and water-energy sites will help us to better comprehend both local and international challenges and solutions.

This course examines the economic, political, social, and spatial dynamics of urban growth and decline in cities and their key component areas (downtown, suburbs, etc.). Topics include impacts of industrialization, technology, politics, and social practices on cities. Students will examine the role of public and private sector activities, ranging from zoning and subsidies to infrastructure development and real estate investment, in affecting urban growth and decline. Readings are both theoretical and empirical, with considerable thought paid to comparative and historical differences.

Focuses on how the housing and human service systems interact: how networks and social capital can build between elements of the two systems. Explores ways in which the differing world views, professional perspectives, and institutional needs of the two systems play out operationally. Part I establishes the nature of the action frames of these two systems. Part II applies these insights to particular vulnerable groups: "at risk" households in transitional housing, the chronically mentally ill, and the frail elderly.

This practicum subject integrates theory and practice through the design, implementation, and evaluation of a comprehensive community information infrastructure that promotes democratic involvement and informs community development projects. Students work with Lawrence Community Works, Inc. to involve constituents and generate solutions to an important planning problem in the City of Lawrence, Massachusetts. Final project presentations take place in a public forum, and serve to inform future development of the information infrastructure. Subject begins with an overview of the digital divide, e-government, public participation GIS, and neighborhood information systems. Subject includes a reflection component and a deliberate investigation of race, class, and gender dynamics.

Explores how public policy and private markets affect housing, economic development, and the local economy; provides an overview of techniques and specified programs policies and strategies that are (and have been) directed at neighborhood development; gives students an opportunity to reflect on their personal sense of the housing and community development process; emphasizes the institutional context within which public and private actions are undertaken.

Provides an introduction to legal and institutional arrangements for the establishment, transfer, and control over property under US and selected comparative systems including India and South Africa. Situates the debate about property in the context of international development and planning. Examines the relationship to the use of land by individuals, entities, communities, and the State through "private" and "public" regulation. Emphasis on efficient resource use, institutional, entitlement, and cultural approaches to property, distribution, and other social aspects, and the relationship between property, culture, and democracy. This course is designed to offer an advanced introduction to key legal issues that arise in the area of property and land-use in American law, with a comparative focus on the laws of India and South Africa. The focus of the course is not on law itself, but on the policy implications of various rules, doctrines and practices which are covered in great detail. Legal rules regulating property are among the most fundamental to American, and most other, economies and societies. The main focus is on American property and land use law due to its prominence in international development policy and practice as a model, though substantial comparative legal materials are also introduced from selected non-western countries such as India and South Africa.

Investigates social conflict and distributional disputes in the public sector. While theoretical aspects of conflict are considered, focus is on the practice of dispute resolution. Comparisons between unassisted and assisted negotiation are reviewed along with the techniques of facilitation, negotiation, and nonbinding arbitration.

The course draws on faculty members from the Center for Real Estate, the City Design and Development Group (Department of Urban Studies and Planning), and the Media Lab to explore extraordinary projects that challenge conventional approaches to real estate development, urban design, and advanced digital technology.

Examines theory and research on the relationship of organizations to each other and to their economic, political, and social environments. Classic and contemporary approaches to complex social systems, the dynamics of inertia and change, the role of legitimacy, and the production of change as an intended or unintended consequence. Considers the relative roles of voluntarism and determinism in the pursuit of organizational agendas and in the shaping of organizational environments, for example, with respect to changing employment relationships and environmentalism. Primarily for doctoral students. The goal of this doctoral course is to familiarize students with major conceptual frameworks, debates, and developments in contemporary organization theory. This is an inter-disciplinary domain of inquiry drawing primarily from sociology, and secondarily from economics, psychology, anthropology, and political science. The course focuses on inter-organizational processes, and also addresses the economic, institutional and cultural contexts that organizations must face. This is an introduction to a vast and multifaceted domain of inquiry. Due to time limitations, this course will touch lightly on many important topics, and neglect others entirely; its design resembles more a map than an encyclopedia. Also, given the focus on theoretical matters, methodological issues will move to the background. Empirical material will be used to illustrate how knowledge is produced from a particular standpoint and trying to answer particular questions, leaving the bulk of the discussion on quantitative and qualitative procedures to seminars such as 15.347, 15.348, and the like.

Subject focuses on methods of digital visualization and communication and their application to planning issues. Lectures introduce methods for describing or representing a place and its residents, for simulating actions and changes, for presenting visions of the future, and for engaging multiple actors in the process of envisioning change and guiding action. Laboratory time allows students to apply these methods by designing a web-based portfolio that is critiqued throughout the semester, and evolves as they advance through the program. This course focuses on methods of digital visualization and communication and their application to planning issues. Lectures will introduce a variety of methods for describing or representing a place and its residents, for simulating changes, for presenting visions of the future, and for engaging multiple actors in the process of guiding action. Through a series of laboratory exercises, students will apply these methods in the construction of a web-based portfolio. The portfolio is not only the final project for the course, but will serve as a container for other course work throughout the MCP program. This course aims to introduce students to (1) such persistent and recurring themes as place, race, power and the environment that face planners, (2) the role of digital technologies in representing, analyzing, and mobilizing communities, (3) MIT faculty and their work, (4) MIT's computing environment and resources including Athena, Element K, the ESRI virtual campus, Computer Resources Laboratory (CRL), Campus Wide Information Systems Support (CWIS), the GIS Laboratory at Rotch Library and (5) software tools like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, ESRI ArcView, Microsoft Access, and Macromediaĺ¨ Dreamweaver that will assist them in creating digital images, working with relational databases, and launching a web-based portfolio. Macromediaĺ¨ is a trademark or registered trademark of Macromedia, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

Explores policy and planning for sustainable development. Critically examines concept of sustainability as a process of social, organizational, and political development drawing on cases from the US and Europe. Explores pathways to sustainability through debates on ecological modernization; sustainable technology development, international and intergenerational fairness, and democratic governance. Third subject in the Environmental Policy and Planning sequence.

During the last fifteen years, nations across the globe embarked on a historic transformation away from centrally planned economies to market-oriented ones. However, in the common pursuit for economic growth, these transition economies implemented widely different reform strategies with mixed results. With over a decade of empirical evidence now available, this new course examines this phenomenon that has pushed the discourse in a number of disciplines, requiring us to reconsider fundamental issues such as: - the proper relationship between business, government, and the public interest; - the possible synergies and tensions between economic growth and equity; and - how economic transition has reshaped cities. The premise of the course is that the primary issue in transition involves institution-building and re-building in different contexts.

This course is being offered in conjunction with the colloquium The Politics of Reconstructing Iraq, which is sponsored by MIT's Center for International Studies and Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Fundamentally, the course focuses on contemporary post-conflict countries (or in-conflict countries) and the role of planning and reconstruction in building nations, mitigating conflicts, reshaping the social, spatial, geopolitical, and political life, and determining the country's future.

This workshop provides an introduction to urban environmental design and explores the potential of information technology and the Internet to transform public education, city design, and community development in inner-city neighborhoods. Integration of comprehensive ("top-down") and grassroots ("bottom-up") approaches to design and planning is a major theme.

Examines techniques and procedures relevant for project planning and implementation in developing countries, including project identification, feasibility analysis, design and implementation monitoring. Considers how to evaluate economic and distributive effects of completed or ongoing development projects. Specific attention given to how institutional setting and other practical influences affect the use of conventional analytical tools.

Examines alternative economic, political, and social perspectives of property rights and their policy and planning implications. Focuses on institutional and governance structures, power and control mechanisms, distributional consequences of different property rights arrangements, and problems of incomplete contracts as presented in theory and practice. Deals with property-rights issues related to two or more of the following: land, natural resources, infrastructure, or industrial organization.

This course provides an introduction to the issues of immigrants, planning, and race. It identifies the complexities and identities of immigrant populations emerging in the United States context and how different community groups negotiate that complexity. It explores the critical differences and commonalities between immigrant and non-immigrant communities, as well as how the planning profession does and should respond to those differences. Finally, the course explores the intersection of immigrant communities' formation and their interactions with African Americans and the idea of race in the United States.

Advanced seminar extends computer and analytic skills developed in the other subjects in this sequence into a research environment. Students present a structured discussion of a journal article representative of current research in Planning Decision Support Systems, and complete an approved short research project. Suggested research projects include topics related to ongoing research projects of the Computer Resource Laboratory. Seminar participants and invited guests will lead critical discussions of current literature and ongoing research. Each student will be responsible for identifying, reviewing, and presenting one structured discussion of articles from the current literature that are relevant to their research topic. The remaining time will be spent working on individual projects or thesis proposals. This fall, the seminar will focus on the following core issues that underlie most implementations of urban information systems and decision support tools: the sustainable acquisition and representation of urban knowledge; the emergent technological infrastructure for supporting metropolitan decision-making; and the innovative organizational and institutional arrangements that can take advantage of modern urban information systems.