Courses taught by Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
16:762:624:01 Planning, Public Policy, and Social Theory
(Fall semester)
This seminar has two goals: (1) to identify, deconstruct, and evaluate some of the major conceptual building-blocks deployed in theory, practice, and research in planning and public policy; and (2) to consider the power of theory in enabling, and constraining the production and application of knowledge in planning and public policy. Through intensive reading and class discussion, students reflect on the assumptions, presuppositions, and conceptual frameworks informing their research. Taught by Dr. Kathe Newman
16:970:501:01 History and Theory of Planning
(Fall or Spring semester)
Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
Traces the evolution and development of the theory and practice of urban planning in historical context, examining how planning reflects the ambitions, contradictions, and challenges of the place and time in which it occurs. By examining changing approaches to the theory and practice of planning, students can clarify their own choices regarding the particular practice of planning with which they hope to engage. Taught by Dr. James DeFilippis
16:970:509:01 Urban Economy and Spatial Patterns
(Fall or Spring semester)
Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
This course examines the urban as the domain or sphere of urban planning. What are the forces, dynamics, processes, performances, actions, and practices that create the economic, political, social, cultural, discursive, ideological, and experiential city as the subject and object of urban planning? How do contending urban theories and approaches constitute the city in different ways, implicating different kinds of planning and policy in response? Students complete a research paper examining an empirical example or case study of an urban process and the challenges it presents for planners.
16:970:653:01 Social Justice in Planning and Public Policy
(Spring semester)
Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
An in-depth exploration of the possibilities for, and barriers to, social justice in planning and public policy. Readings examine social justice as a normative principle, motivating ideal, guide to action, and evaluative standard in the practice of planning and public policy. The first half of the course surveys contending approaches to social justice variously understood as equality, fairness, legitimacy, integrity, inclusiveness, and usefulness, and considers the implications for practice of adopting one or another of these conceptions of justice. The second half of the course considers challenges to social justice posed by structural inequality, disempowerment, diversity and multiplicity, localism and globalization, and the inadequacy of democracy as a mode of collective decision-making in a post-political world. Taught by Dr. James DeFilippis