General Electives
PD 511 Computer Applications to Planning
Provides a broad introduction to information technology and computer skills for planning practice. Offers hands-on experience using spreadsheet, database applications, and internet resources. Introduces planning applications such as computer-aided design, planning support and decision systems, project management and geographic information systems. Discusses planners’ responses to the technological transformation of communities.
PD 519 Using Economic Data
Trains students to navigate and use effectively the vast and complex data systems offered by federal, state, local, and private data sources. Identifies types of data series and their methodologies, reliability, and idiosyncrasies. Covers how to conceptualize aspects of the regional economy, how to apply data for basic regional economic analysis, and how to communicate data in concise, informative, and compelling charts, tables, and maps.
PD 520 Housing and Social Policy
Explores contexts of housing and housing policy, and surveys basics of housing economics, U.S. housing policy, and key public policy issues shaping the provision of shelter. Applies interdisciplinary perspective to the analysis of housing in relation to poverty, homelessness, race relations, and other factors that affect housing.
PD 522 Economic Development and Industrial Change
Explores new strategies through which cities and regions shape their economies. Critically discusses traditional business attraction and retention policies and introduces new strategies to encourage local entrepreneurship, adapt to an information economy, strengthen regional clusters of economic specialization, and target marketing.
PD 525 Financing Urban Development
Introduces students to the theory and practice of decision-making in real estate development and project finance that shape urban development. Familiarizes future planning professionals with the details of the complex processes by which urban space and built form are actually brought into being in the market-based US economy. Gives students instruction in calculating basic financial feasibility of projects and helps students understand as well as prepare actual cash flow pro forma. Covers blended financing techniques and explains the mechanisms of subsidization of development to achieve public policy objectives.
PD 526 Strategic Planning and Implementation
Covers the concepts and techniques of strategic planning, particularly applied to regional economic development. Trains students to understand the politics and skills of implementation to ensure plans and policies go beyond the conceptual stage.
PD 539 Local Government Finance and Budget
Introduces students to the theory, practice, and real world applications of the financial operations of local government. Concentrates on issues of public budgeting, revenue analysis, and issues of special concern to local planning, including fiscal impact of development, public school finance, and tax increment financing models.
PD 541 Nonprofit Management
This course introduces students to management issues in the nonprofit sector. Topics will include nonprofit: governance, board structure, planning, financial management, fundraising, grant writing, leadership, personnel management, and ethics. The course will examine major nonprofit sub-sectors that relate to urban planning such as: community-based organizations, nonprofit healthcare providers, educational institutions, cultural institutions, faith-based organizations, and funding intermediaries.
PD 543 Negotiations and Conflict Resolution
Introduces and provides practice in concepts and techniques in negotiations, mediation, and conflict resolution. Through lectures, readings, case studies, and exercises, applies skills and knowledge to cases involving uncertain, non-routine, and highly charged issues involving special interests, government agencies, property owners, developers, and community groups.
PD 545 Internship
Offers opportunity to work in urban or regional agencies under professional supervision: housing, neighborhood renewal, transportation, urban design, etc.
PD 560 Planning for Sustainable Development
Examines environmental, economic, social, and cultural perspectives on sustainability at the global, national, regional and local levels. Covers short-term versus long-term tradeoffs, paradigms of development and vulnerability versus sustainability. Emphasizes issues and uses of measurement, ecological footprint analysis, and sustainable planning techniques.
PD 561 Qualitative Methods for Planning
Covers methods often used at the community level, including neighborhood analysis (using Census and other data), focus groups, charrettes, facilitation, surveys, and other quantitative and qualitative methods. Prepares students to effectively assemble, organize, analyze, and use information to investigate and act on planning matters, including racial and ethnic change, commuting patterns, housing affordability, the socio-economics of place, wealth gaps, industry/occupation analyses, sprawl, and immigration.
PD 562 Transportation, Land Use, and Urban Form
Examines the evolution of urban transportation systems in the United States, with emphasis on the complex relationship between transportation, land use, and urban form. Covers the history of transportation systems and urban form, the values shaping our views of cities and transportation systems, transportation and land use connections, and contemporary research on key land use and transportation policy questions.
PD 563 Cities and Globalization
Explores how global change redefines spatial relations within and among cities, the impact of globalization on the social and cultural composition of cities, and the role of large-scale projects in globalizing cities. Introduces the main debates about globalization, including the world city hypothesis, global city, dual city vs. quartered city, and the regional world.
PD 565 Urban Planning and Design I: Methods and Case Studies
Combines readings, lectures, and fieldtrips to explore the practice of urban design and the physical design languages of cities. Group and individual projects focus on graphic preparation and presentation, the power of zoning in regulating urban development, and the preparation of a case study.
PD 566 Urban Planning and Design II: Theory of Urban Form
Examines theories of urban form and the evolution of urban design concepts. Explores the connection between physical and social development, with emphasis on the relationships between the design of urban space and social idealism.
PD 568 Environmental Planning and Policy
Examines environmental policy through in-depth investigation of contemporary environmental topics, including air quality, water quality, energy planning, and contaminated lands. Trains students to understand the context of environmental problems and the complexity of environmental policymaking. Outlines the development and implementation of environmental plans and policies.
PD 569 GIS Applications
Provides a framework for storing, accessing, analyzing, and reporting information for use in planning and other applications. Concentrates on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a technical tool by which to manipulate information in a spatial system. Covers general concepts of GIS independent of specific GIS computer software packages, while labs provide hands-on experience using latest ArcGIS software.
PD 570 GIS for Planning
Provides working facility in GIS and decision support using a variety of software and web-based programs. Topics include GIS modeling techniques, the importing of data bases and data manipulation, selection and querying of data, thematic mapping, use of Global Positioning Systems, use of digital orthophotos in GIS, and location analysis. Instruction focuses on practical applications in a laboratory format.
Prerequisite: PD 569 or equivalent.
PD 571 3D Visual and Urban Simulation
Introduces students to visualization tools that have been developed and applied in the environmental disciplines to facilitate better land use planning decisions. Through hands-on exercises, students will learn ArcGIS 3D Analyst, Geodatabase, and CommunityViz. Guest lectures will be incorporated to expose students with actual urban simulation projects.
PD 574 Physical Planning Applications
Applies concepts of physical planning to case study practice. Provides techniques and knowledge to integrate physical features, regulatory controls, public investments, market influences, design factors, utilities and underground systems, and land use distribution in assessing and developing plans. Pre-requisite: PD 573 Land Use and Physical Planning.
PD 576 Comparative International Planning and Development
Surveys knowledge and skills to understand and navigate effectively in international planning practice. Covers international issues in spatial planning, economic development, disaster management, the environment, and cultural conflict. Explores issues of technical assistance, including the role and operation of international agencies, consulting firms, local governments, and nongovernmental planning organizations.
PD 577 Planning Techniques in Action
Introduces concepts and techniques to effectively use quantitative methods and information technology in highly complex, often politicized, organizational contexts. Provides planners interacting with consultants, government officials, and nonprofit organizations with insights on timeliness, cost-effectiveness, and appropriate use of information.
PD 578 Environmental Planning Methods
Introduces methods to solve problems resulting from the interactions of the built and natural environment. Topics include natural resource inventories, measurement of economic development impacts, groundwater protection plans, wildlife habitat protection, environmental impact studies, solid waste management plans, state implementation plans for air pollution, remedial action plans, and wetlands identification, mapping and protection.
PD 579 Global Issues and Futures Studies
Addresses global trends and processes of change and their consequences for cities and localities. Emphasizes concepts and techniques connecting global and local contexts. Exposes students to modes of strategic thinking thorugh which, in a rapidly changing world, they can investigate future implications of today's policy choices.
PD 588 - PD 595 Special Topics
Topics vary. Seminars introduce students to important topics in planning. Recent special topics included Tourism and Recreation Planning and Policy and Disaster Planning.
PD 599 Independent Study
Under faculty supervision, students initiate a detailed exploration of a topic of interest.
PD 601 Planning Decision Support/Advanced GIS
Teaches advanced computing techniques known as "Decision Support Systems" (DSS) that provide sophisticated analysis of professional planning problems, especially land use and environmental problems. The DSS runs on a GIS database and modeling environment.
PD 603 Urban Policy Analysis
Introduces concepts of policy analysis. Presents a framework and methods for effectively making public policies, including the consideration of economic, political and social factors. Covers policy analysis from agenda setting to implementation and evaluation.
PD 606 Community Development Processes
Examines the complex interaction of social, economic, and political factors in local community development programs, policies, and processes. Covers history and efficacy of traditional and alternative models of community development, including entrepreneurial strategies, community-based strategies, municipal-based strategies, faith-based development strategies, and modes of citizen involvement in community affairs.
