Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session

Course Objectives

As an introduction to the field of Housing, Community, and Economic Development (HCED), the course is structured to:

1. Advance student's understanding of how public policy and private markets affect housing, economic development, the local economy, and neighborhood institutions;
   
2. Provide an overview of techniques for framing public and private interventions to meet housing and community development agendas, broadly defined, of inner city and low income neighborhoods;
   
3. Review and critique specific programs, policies and strategies that are (and have been) directed at local development and neighborhood regeneration issues;
   
4. Give students an opportunity to reflect on their personal sense of the "housing, community, and economic development" process and the various roles that planners play in implementing the elements of that agenda.

Given that the quest for effective practice underlies the HCED philosophy, the course emphasizes strategic analysis of the institutional contexts within which public, nonprofit, and private actions directed at housing, economic, and community development are implemented. Framing neighborhood institutions and organizations, their relationship to one another and to "city-wide" players is a theme running throughout the course.

Requirements

Students are expected to do the required reading, to participate in class discussions, and to hand in three memos. Expectations for the memos, their form, purpose, content, setting etc., will be discussed in detail in class.

Grade

The final grade will be based on the following: