Practical information, specific tools, regulatory processes, and analytic methods useful in the practice of public sector planning at the local level.

Planning as a decision-making process, the attributes of the political and administrative environment within which planning takes place, and the implications of this environment for the planning process and the planner.

This course will introduce students to public participation at the practice level in planning. Lectures and class discussions will review current theory underpinning participation practice, and will critically evaluate the wide range of participation methods currently in use in planning practice. There will also be one or more exercises in participation implementation that occur outside standard class times, when we will join one of the other studio classes, and plan and run their participation process.

Application of quantitative methods used by regional and urban planners. Problem definition and data sources, data collection and analysis using descriptive and inferential statistics, and spreadsheet and database planning software. Data presentation techniques. Prerequisite: Statis 501 or equivalent.

Interdisciplinary seminar on the applications of environmental psychology research to planning and design. Topics include landscape preference, territoriality and defensible space, way finding, and restorative settings/therapeutic gardens.

This seminar reads some of the most current literature on the future of the urban form given climate change, and allows time and shared space to reflect on what these coming changes mean for (primarily local) government as well as governance. The class focus will be on implications of these coming conditions for built form both now and in the future, with a goal of developing a working understanding of what municipal, regional, and state planners and policymakers need to know now about these conditions to provide leadership to communities.

Contact department for description.

Is housing a right? If housing is a right, then should the government ensure that all persons - regardless of their race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, age, income, or household size - receive the necessary and sufficient delivery of this public or private good? However, if housing is not a right, then what is the proper role of government in our capitalist society? In this course, we will focus on the development housing policy in the United States and examine the national, state, and local delivery of this public or private good.

This course explores the political and governance challenges of decarbonizing the energy system, focusing on land use conflicts, stakeholder dynamics, and policy decision-making. Students will examine real-world case studies of renewable energy siting, analyze multi-level governance structures, and assess environmental justice implications. A key component of the course is the application of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), an advanced research method used to evaluate how social movements, community mobilization, and policy design influence renewable energy implementation.

This seminar examines how communication policy has addressed social equity issues in light of domestic and global structural and technological transformations of the last two decades. We will focus on how notions of access, diversity, expression, control and development have evolved within the structure of the U.S. and global communication policy regimes, discussing their implications for social exclusion.