Focus Area
Housing and Equitable Development

Metropolitan regions across the world are facing growing housing unaffordability, rising income inequality, and widening wealth gaps that are tearing our cities and neighborhoods apart. How can planners and policymakers respond to those challenges? What actions can they take to address them? This focus area provides students with the conceptual and analytical framework to examine the underlying causes of those challenges and, more importantly, the knowledge and skills they will need to tackle those problems. Courses in this focus area include the study of different policy instruments and what makes them work or not work, the creation and financing of housing and real estate development that offers opportunities to households of all income levels, the structuring of public and private partnerships that will ensure equitable distribution of costs and benefits from urban development and redevelopment. Graduates of this focus area will be able to work with for-profit and nonprofit affordable housing developers, community development corporations and intermediaries, and different levels of government agencies focusing on housing and community development.

Coordinator: Lan Deng

Primary courses

  • URP572, Comparative Housing and Property Policy
  • URP 581, Housing Policy and Economics
  • URP591, Financing Real Estate Development
  • URP 595, Public Private Partnerships

Secondary courses

  • URP 555/ARCH 517, Architect/Planner as Developer
  • URP 580, Metropolitan Structure
  • URP 582, Neighborhood Revitalization Policy and Planning
  • URP 590, Integrative Real Estate Seminar
  • URP 594, Real Estate and Urban Development

Non-URP courses

Other relevant courses may be found in the Business School, Law School, Public Policy and other fields. Here is a selected list:

  • LAW826, Fair Housing Law and Policy
  • PubPol475/750, Community Development Finance
  • PubPol 746, Social Welfare Policy
  • FIN566/567, Real Estate Finance and Investment I&II
  • BL 582, Real Estate Law