Online courses directory (2511)

This seminar focuses on understanding the role of high-quality design as a tool to address urban social problems. This course will also examine marginalized spaces and how urban design can intervene as a tool to creatively challenge traditional urban design practices.

The course is designed to be an introduction to methods of analyzing, evaluating, and recording the urban environment first hand. Its aim is to supplement existing courses that cover theory and history of city design and planning and to better prepare students without prior design background for the studio sequence.

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.

Economic, religious, gender, and ethnic differences must be negotiated every day in the urban arena. When tensions and conflict escalate into violence, the urban space becomes the battlespace in which these tensions are negotiated. This course examines urban development challenges in conflict cities through multiple disciplinary perspectives on urban conflict. This course also reviews literature that focuses on when violence and cities intersect. Students will learn about policy innovations, and study potential planning, design, and policy solutions.

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 subject discusses the broader trends in the labor market, how urban labor markets function, public and private training policy, other labor market programs, the link between labor market policy and economic development, and the organization of work within firms.

This readings-based course analyzes the structure and operation of government systems in developing countries, with particular emphasis on regional and local governments. Major topics include: the role of decentralization in national economic reform programs, the potential impact of decentralized governments on local economic development, determination of optimal arrangements for sharing fiscal responsibilities among levels of government, evaluation of local revenue and expenditure decisions, and assessment of prospects and options for intergovernmental fiscal reform. Emphasis is on basic economic concerns, with consideration given to political, institutional, and cultural factors.

This course explores the creative dialectic—and sometimes conflict—between sociology and urban policy and design. Topics include the changing conceptions of "community," the effects of neighborhood characteristics on individual outcomes, the significance of social capital and networks, the drivers of categorical inequality, and the interaction of social structure and political power. Students will examine key theoretical paradigms that have constituted sociology since its founding, assess how and why they have changed over time, and discuss the implications of these shifts for urban research and planning practice.

This seminar took place at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Norfolk, MA, with half the class from MIT and half of the class from MCI Norfolk via the Boston University Prison Education Program. The location and composition of the class was chosen based on the belief that bringing together students of sociology and urban studies who are incarcerated with those who are at MIT would create a unique and valuable environment in which to generate new knowledge about our social world and the repeated mechanisms that contribute to persistent socio-economic inequality and other pressing social problems.

This class is an introduction to planning transportation in metropolitan areas. The approach, while rooted on the analytical tools which estimate outcomes and alternatives, is holistic. This means starting from a scan of the site, its history and its current trends, in order to frame properly the problem, including the relevant actors, institutions, roles and interests. The design and evaluation of alternatives considers this complexity, in addition to construction, operation and maintenance issues.  The decision-making and implementation process, including the needed feedback mechanisms, focuses as well on the need to build constituencies and alliances.

The course topics include the history of urban transportation, highway finance, environmental and planning regulations, air quality, modal characteristics, land use and transportation interaction and emerging information technologies for transportation planning. Students either with a primary or peripheral interest in transportation are equally welcome.

The course uses examples from the Boston metropolitan area extensively, both because of its proximity and the strong influence Boston has had on US transport policy. In parallel, examples from other countries describe the challenges faced elsewhere, as well as lessons learned. There will be walking tours of several transportation sites in Boston.

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 history, policy, and politics of urban transportation are discussed in this class. Also covered are the role of the federal government, the "highway revolt" and public transit in the auto era, using analytic tools for transportation planning and policy analysis. The class then explores the contribution of transportation to air pollution and climate change, land use and transportation interactions, together with issues with bicycles, pedestrians, and traffic calming. Examples used in the class are taken mainly from the Boston metropolitan area.

This course is aimed at the aspiring planning practitioner, policy-maker, or industry decision-maker with an interest in urban transportation and environmental issues in Latin America. The course will focus on current transport-related themes confronting many cities in the region, including: rapid motorization and suburbanization and subsequent impacts on transportation infrastructure and quality of life; public sector management and improvement of privately-owned and operated transit systems; and, transportation air pollution problems and potential solutions.

The course will be geared towards interactive problem-solving, taking advantage of students' skills and experiences in: institutional analysis, policy analysis, and project and program evaluation and implementation. Detailed knowledge of transportation planning is not required; instead, the course will attempt to place the general practitioner into a specific transportation public policy situation and draw from her skills to devise real solutions. To fulfill this problem-solving orientation, the course will be divided into two parts. Part I of the course will consist of a series of lectures on the principal issues surrounding transportation in the developing world (including motorization, fiscal pressures, urban sprawl), concepts of  sustainability as they relate to urban transportation, regional strategic planning approaches, and transportation policy and technology options and examples of successful implementation.  After these lectures, Part II of the course will be dedicated to the two case studies, where students will apply the knowledge gained in Part I to develop strategic solutions to the transport-land use-environment challenges in two different cities.

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.

The course explores the interactions between state and market as instigators of China's urbanization, and its consequences of land, housing, transportation, energy, environment, migration, finance, urban inequality. Themes include the de-synchronization of China's urbanization, potential differences between China's past and future development, and differentiators between China's urbanization and those of other countries. This discussion-based course asks students to participate in the conversation with the course instructor and guest lecturers by drawing upon their experiences and academic or professional backgrounds.

6.831/6.813 examines human-computer interaction in the context of graphical user interfaces. The course covers human capabilities, design principles, prototyping techniques, evaluation techniques, and the implementation of graphical user interfaces. Deliverables include short programming assignments and a semester-long group project. Students taking the graduate version also have readings from current literature and additional assignments.

6.831/6.813 examines human-computer interaction in the context of graphical user interfaces. The course covers human capabilities, design principles, prototyping techniques, evaluation techniques, and the implementation of graphical user interfaces. Deliverables include short programming assignments and a semester-long group project. Students taking the graduate version also have readings from current literature and additional assignments.

The course covers British literature and culture during Queen Victoria's long reign, 1837-1901. This was the brilliant age of Charles Dickens, the Brontës, Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, Robert Browning, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Alfred, Lord Tennyson – and many others. It was also the age of urbanization, steam power, class conflict, Darwin, religious crisis, imperial expansion, information explosion, bureaucratization – and much more.

This course will serve as an introduction to the interdisciplinary academic study of videogames, examining their cultural, educational, and social functions in contemporary settings. By playing, analyzing, and reading and writing about videogames, we will examine debates surrounding how they function within socially situated contexts in order to better understand games' influence on and reflections of society. Readings will include contemporary videogame theory and the completion of a contemporary commercial videogame chosen in consultation with the instructor.

This course will serve as an introduction to the interdisciplinary academic study of videogames, examining their cultural, educational, and social functions in contemporary settings. By playing, analyzing, and reading and writing about videogames, we will examine debates surrounding how they function within socially situated contexts in order to better understand games' influence on and reflections of society. Readings will include contemporary videogame theory and the completion of a contemporary commercial videogame chosen in consultation with the instructor.

This course examines the contemporary problem of political violence and the way that human rights have been conceived as a means to protect and promote freedom, peace and justice for citizens against the abuses of the state.