Below is a selection of currently offered courses for the summer semester. For a full list of courses, see the UC Berkeley Online Schedule of Classes.
DCRP Summer 2021 Courses will be taught remotely.
CY PLAN 101
Introduction to Urban Data Analytics
Session C - 8 Weeks: June 21 - August 13
Units: 4 (Lecture / Discussion)
Instructor: Marcel Moran & Manuel Santana Palacios
This course (1) provides a basic intro to census and economic data collection, processing, and analysis; (2) surveys modeling and story mapping techniques in planning; (3) demonstrates the uses of real-time urban data and analytics; and (4) provides a socio-economic-political context for the smart cities movement, focusing on data ethics and governance.
Extended Course Description: CP 101 introduces students to the systematic analysis of urban data. This relies on critical thinking with regard to economic, social, and environmental outcomes, from air pollution and car crashes to housing density and police conduct. Accordingly, this course will teach students systematic approaches to collecting, analyzing, modeling and interpreting quantitative and qualitative data used to inform urban planning practice and policymaking. Students will also be introduced to theory and critical discourses on topics such as big data, open data, privacy, and modern-municipal governance. Instructors will expect students to engage with the technical, theoretical, and ethical implications associated with these subjects in both lecture and laboratory sections. The course will introduce students to Excel and programming in Python, using open-source software, accessing open and 'scraped' data, as well as other tools and techniques for urban data analysis.
CYPLAN 110
Introduction to City Planning
Session C - 8 Weeks: June 21 - August 13
Units: 4 (Lecture / Discussion)
Instructor: Priscila Coli Rocha
Survey of city planning as it has evolved in the United States since 1800 in response to physical, social, and economic problems; major concepts and procedures used by city planners and local governments to improve the urban environment.
Extended Course Description:
Introduction to City Planning is an upper-division course in the Department of City and Regional Planning, providing students with a study of the basic tools, history, and contemporary debates in planning in the United States and abroad. The course explores several key areas of planning practice, including housing, transportation, regional and community development. The course also examines key challenges and opportunities in urban planning, including sustainability, environmental justice, immigration, and community health. Throughout the semester, the course also examines justice, equity, and access issues as these relate to planning practice, planning theory, and the built environment. Given the often overlooked or neglected issues related to race, class, and gender, among others, the course aims to situate these in the study of planning histories, theories, and practices to help inform a new generation of planners, advocates, and informed global citizens. Students will gain a perspective to see how these issues form the complex fabric of cities, regions, and nations, which must be considered and incorporated into planning analysis and decision-making.
CYPLAN 113A
Economic Analysis for Planning
Session A - 6 Weeks: May 24 - July 2
Units: 3 (Lecture)
Instructor: Clara Turner & Laura Schmahmann
This is an introductory course in the application of basic principles of economic analysis to problems of urban planning and policy. The course aims to cover the fundamentals of microeconomic theory and apply them to contemporary planning issues, including urban land use, transportation, housing, education, and economic development planning
Extended Course Description: Economic theories and methods can be powerful tools for understanding important issues facing communities and to evaluate policies that might address them. In CP113A we will learn about central concepts and methods of economic analysis and how they can be applied to questions of urban planning and policy. We will cover many of the core methods used in economic analysis: descriptive statistics, basic regression models, multiplier effects, location quotients, impact analysis, and measures of inequality and segregation. We will also explore methods for evaluating policy interventions.
CYPLAN 114
Introduction to Urban and Regional Transportation
Session A - 6 Weeks: May 24 - July 2
Units: 3 (Lecture)
Instructor: Chester Harvey & Meiqing Li
This course is designed to introduce students to the characteristics of urban transportation systems, the methods through which they are planned and analyzed, and the dimensions of key policy issues confronting decision makers.
Extended Course Description: Efficient, safe, and sustainable transportation is essential to the social, economic, and environmental well-being of cities and regions. This survey course covers a range of themes related to the planning of such systems. We focus on multi-modal ground transportation—autos/highways, mass transit, paratransit, and non-motorized transport—at multiple geographical scales ranging from local neighborhoods to large urban regions. The course concentrates on contemporary policy issues and problems such as traffic congestion, air pollution, energy consumption, social equity, and transportation finance. The institutional and political environment that governs transportation planning and practice are an important theme as well. As background we also study the historical evolution of transportation systems; how transportation systems have shaped metropolitan areas; variance in travel demand in regions; and how transportation planning is carried out in the US.
CYPLAN N115
Urbanization in Developing Countries
Session A - 6 Weeks: May 24 - July 2
Units: 3 (Lecture)
Instructor: Giselle Mendonca Abreu
This course introduces students to histories, challenges, and processes of urbanization in the Global South. As a course committed to critical perspectives, two questions will be underlying our discussions. First, we will ask: how have the various institutions and practices covered in the course contributed to shaping, or resisting to, the production of urban inequality? Second, how can we disrupt the geographical understanding of a “Global South” and situate these histories, practices, and debates in relation to, and within, the United States?
Extended Course Description: The course is organized in three parts. Part I focuses on histories of urbanization in the Global South. We will trace three critical conjunctures and forms of producing cities: a late colonial period (late 19th century to the 1940s), a nation-building period focused on modernist planning ideas (1950–1980s), and the formation of auto-constructed urban peripheries (1970s–1990s). Part II looks at particular “problems” of urbanization in the Global South. We will critically examine how informality, security, housing, and infrastructure came to be understood as “problems” and the various practices created to deal with them—by international institutions, through national or local policies, and by residents themselves. Part III discusses emergent socio-spatial forms of urbanization in the Global South. We will analyze and discuss contemporary processes of production of urban space: post-conflict urbanisms (such as the proliferation of camps and walls), world-class urbanisms (which can involve both the production of hyper-technological landscapes and dispossessions across the agrarian-urban divide), and insurgent urbanisms (focusing on claims and practices guided by the idea of a “right to the city”).
CYPLAN 118AC
The Urban Community
Session C - 8 Weeks: June 21 - August 13
Units: 4 (Lecture / Discussion)
Instructor: Ricardo Huerta Niño & Christopher Mizes
This course looks at the idea and practice of community in cities and suburbs and at the dynamics of neighborhood and community formation. Topics include urban social geography, ethnicity, and identity, residential choice behavior, the political economy of neighborhoods, planning for neighborhoods and civic engagement. Instructors emphasize different topics. Class size limits depend on the instructor.
Extended Course Description: TBD
CYPLAN 119
Planning for Sustainability
Session C - 8 Weeks: June 21 - August 13
Units: 4 (Lecture / Discussion)
Instructor: Yanin Kramsky
This course examines how the concept of sustainable development applies to cities and urban regions and gives students insight into a variety of contemporary urban planning issues through the sustainability lens. The course combines lectures, discussions, student projects, and guest appearances by leading practitioners in Bay Area sustainability efforts. Ways to coordinate goals of environment, economy, and equity at different scales of planning are addressed, including the region, the city, the neighborhood, and the site.
Extended Course Description: Major 21st-century challenges around the world are leading to a renewed focus on the importance of planning: climate change, resource depletion, land degradation, and habitat loss; rapid urbanization, overcrowding, and inadequate access to quality housing, services, and infrastructure; price spikes on essential goods; among other worries that are further exacerbated by the global pandemic we collectively face. All of these problems have substantial implications for the present and long-term form and functioning of metropolitan regions, counties, cities, neighborhoods, and unincorporated areas. Moreover, unchecked human consumption of natural resources and land-use patterns are altering ecosystems worldwide. Because these are global multi-species problems, they require the transformation of existing power structures, public coordination, and equitable interventions in order to fundamentally change the nature of urban development. This requires planning. However, in the US and many places, 20th century planning practices and policies compromised environmental and social factors in the pursuit of economic growth.
Ever since the Brundtland Commission’s concept of ‘sustainable development’ gained traction during the late 1980s, planners have been tasked with carrying out sustainability goals around the world. The 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) explicitly brought sustainable development within the purview of planners by way of Local Agenda 21 initiatives. As the consequences of pervasive urbanization continue to unfold, the challenge of how to create sustainable cities has become an urgent focus of decision makers at every level. Worries about the environmental impacts of rampant urban development persist, from rising economic inequality to urban poverty and the formation of slums (areas without adequate water, sanitation, housing, and rights of tenure). Today, these global concerns have culminated in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda and are continuously refocusing attention on planning.
New approaches to planning focused on achieving sustainability at various scales can help us reduce the pace and impact of human-induced climate change. While our current era still places economic growth and environmental quality on equal footing, questions of equity are infiltrating sustainability discourses. We can ensure equitable access to basic services and environmental amenities (e.g. open spaces) in cities. We can reshape our cities from being sprawling and car-dependent to being compact, public transport-based, and pedestrian-oriented. We can increase the availability of housing that is both affordable and ‘green’ in order to reduce fuel demand. However, without attention to the contradictions of urban development, even supposedly ‘green’ planning initiatives can lead to displacement, exclusion, and disparities. The planning process has potential to promote equity through meaningful public participation and decision-making, as well as instruments such as land-use zoning and tax incentives. Furthermore, planners can help identify and eliminate spaces of environmental and climate injustices through land remediation, limits on hazardous waste, and just processes for relocating residents from high-risk areas.
The previous incarnation of planners as top-down, expert-driven, technical blueprint creators of ‘master plans’ is transforming to cope with historical and present-day power imbalances as well as complex, newer forms of urbanization. The concept of and movement towards sustainability is creating a common language and set of practices (measures, methods, goals) between the planning profession and broader world of environmental governance, public health, public policy, design, and other related fields. Governments that ‘get it’ realize that sustainability requires planning frameworks that are inclusive, participatory, reflexive, adaptive, strategic, and action-oriented. Now that the profession has embraced sustainability, new ideas, critical perspectives, and transdisciplinary connections are allowing planning to evolve and integrate with other fields and stakeholders for better management of urban growth.
This course addresses the historical roots and evolution of ‘sustainable development,’ how this concept applies to different scales of planning––including the region, county, city, neighborhood, and site––and what is at stake. Students will gain insight into a variety of contemporary urban planning issues through a sustainability lens, including environmental and climate justice. The course combines lectures, discussions, and in-class activities with writing assignments and student projects. Together, we will critically examine ways to coordinate the goals of environment, economy, and equity.
CYPLAN 130
U.S. Housing, Planning and Policy
Session A - 6 Weeks: May 24 - July 2
Units: 3 (Lecture)
Instructor: Madeleine Parker
This course introduces students to housing policy in the United States through readings, guest lectures, case studies, and hands-on exercises. Topics include housing affordability, the interaction between demand and supply, housing finance, zoning and land use, gentrification and displacement, and the role that housing plays in promoting household well-being.
Extended Course Description: Long before Covid-19, the United States suffered from a housing crisis, the depths of which have only been exposed by the pandemic. Across the country, working class and low-income Americans struggle to pay rent, while the prospect of home ownership is elusive for all but the very rich. At the local level, battles over where to build and how to prevent displacement highlight the tradeoffs between housing affordability, place-based investing, and access to opportunity. How did we get here? And what should U.S. housing policy look like going forward? The goal of this class is to build a foundation that will help students to think critically about these questions.
Through readings, guest lectures, case studies, and hands-on exercises, the class will explore a range of topics, including housing affordability, the interaction between demand and supply, housing finance, zoning and land use, gentrification and displacement, and the role that housing plays in promoting household well-being. The course will be oriented to contemporary issues in US housing policy, and will focus mostly, but not exclusively, on the US context.
This course will pay particular attention to how housing is intertwined with issues of inequality and access to opportunity for low-income and minority households. It will also provide context for the issues that city, regional, and state level governments face in determining housing policies and programs. By the end of the class, students will understand the origins of contemporary debates in U.S. housing policy, gain familiarity with the programs, players, and best practices in the field, and develop their ability to evaluate the tradeoffs and challenges inherent in different policy approaches.
CYPLAN 190
Race, Redevelopment, and Gentrification: Oakland's Hoover-Durant Library
Co-listed with HUM 132AC/ ENVDES C132AC
Session C - 8 Weeks: June 21 - August 13
Units: 4 (Seminar)
Instructor: Lynne Horiuchi
Extended Course Description: For several decades, West Oakland residents have been working to establish the Hoover-Durant Library in their neighborhood as a center for community and culture. In this course, you will work collaboratively with community members to conduct research and create products such as plans and oral histories that advance their cause. You will engage intellectually and personally with issues of race and privilege and examine systemically entrenched inequities through the story of one neighborhood. Through time spent in the neighborhood and with its activists, you will learn about local needs and strengths and collaborate with residents in ways that benefit their project. The course work will be framed by the work of scholars of color who study the intersection of race, architecture and urbanism. You will learn to use and organize archives, research potential sites for the library, and may create events such as a popup library or zine workshop. https://futurehistories.berkeley.edu/courses/race-redevelopment-and-gentrification-oaklands-hoover-durant-library/
This section of CYPLAN 190 fulfills the studio requirement for the Certificate in Urban Humanities. Students wishing to fulfill the American Cultures requirement with this class should register in HUM 132AC or ENVDES 132AC.
ENV DES 2 003
Summer [IN]STITUTE in Environmental Design: [IN]CITY
Session D - 6 Weeks: July 6 - August 13
Units: 1-5 (Seminar, Studio, Lecture, Lab)
Instructor: Michael Larice
Extended Course Description: The [IN]CITY program provides students with introductory skills in urban planning and policy methods, including data collection/analysis, physical planning, mapping and visual representation. Students will also gain a broad knowledge on sustainability planning and learn how to translate sustainability objectives into clear scopes of action. They will also develop the ability to express planning and policy matters in to clear verbal and graphic terms while learning how to work effectively with other students, professors and clients through hands-on team projects. Students will be introduced to land use policies and urban development processes and develop critical thinking, observation, and analysis regarding an understanding of cities. [IN]CITY consists of a multi-disciplinary lecture series, smaller discipline-specific lectures, a planning studio, and field work led by faculty and graduate students from the Department of Architecture. Participants should expect to spend a significant amount of time working independently outside of formal instruction hours. After fulfilling the program requirements, participants receive a certificate of completion.
To enroll in this course, you must be accepted to the Summer [IN]STITUTE. For information on how to apply, visit the CED Summer Programs website.
ENV DES 98 002
Disc* (Design & Innovation for Sustainable Cities)
Session D - 5 Weeks: July 6 - August 6
Units: 1-5 (Seminar, Studio, Lecture, Lab)
Instructor: Gabriel Kaprielian
Extended Course Description: Disc* is about the present and the future of global urban environments, their challenges, and the potential of design and innovation as catalysts for change. Students will attend lectures and talks, partake in interactive demos and workshops, and be immersed in design studio culture throughout the five weeks.
Guided by UC Berkeley faculty, Bay Area urbanists, designers, makers, and entrepreneurs, Disc* students confront the most pressing challenges of global urbanization using innovative people-centered design. Students have the opportunity to develop and test their own creative ideas while working with some of the most forward-thinking researchers and practitioners from the Bay Area design community.
Upon completion of the Disc* program, graduates have a strong understanding of urban processes and a broad toolkit with which to tackle "wicked problems". Disc* alumni are prepared to become the next thought leaders and game changers in the shaping of our built environment.
Participants should expect to spend a significant amount of time working independently outside of formal instruction hours. After fulfilling the program requirements, participants receive a certificate of completion and course credit on an official UC Berkeley transcript.
To enroll in this course, you must be accepted to the Disc* program. For information on how to apply, visit the CED Summer Programs website.