This capstone course explores a wide array of theoretical and analytical tools to help policy makers diagnose, prioritize and address development challenges at a national or sub-national level.

This course examines housing as both an individual concern and an object of policy and planning. It is intended to provide those with an interest in urban policy and planning with a broad background on why housing matters and how its unique attributes a) give rise to certain policy and planning challenges and b) should shape how practitioners respond to these challenges.

This course will provide students with an understanding of water that will inform their professional approaches to landscape architecture, architecture, and planning, and contribute to protecting, improving, restoring, and sustaining water resources.

How do we understand a landscape? This proseminar explores epistemologies that constitute the field of landscape architecture.

What are the factors that hold Asia together, or run the risk of pulling it apart? This course examines contemporary Asia, one of the most politically and economically dynamic regions of the world, exploring how far it can be seen as one region and how complex the forces within it are.

This course examines the emerging context for real estate practice worldwide that measures success not solely by the financial bottom line but also by achievement of beneficial spatial, social, and environmental outcomes.

This elective seminar will provide a deeper dive into issues of evidence-based, high-performance, ecological building design.

Physicians and epidemiologists have already begun to document the adverse health effects of global warming. The myriad impacts are only going to get worse. While these specific health threats are new, concerns about health and the environment have ancient origins. This course will explore the long history of theorizing about the impact of the environment on health, paying particular attention to changing climates: what happens when people travel to new climates, and what happens when a place’s climate changes. Topics range from health in the ancient world to modern theories of planetary health.

This course prepares students to invest in, advise, or lead organizations in the context of increasing pressures of global urbanization, resource scarcity, and perils relating to climate change. The course takes a finance and real assets point of view focusing on houses, buildings, infrastructure, and cities as individuals, businesses, and global society make choices about who and what to protect. There are perils and also extensive opportunities in the analysis of situations and the deployment of tools, data science, and capital leading to success even in the face of these tensions.

This course is about one of the largest industries in the world: energy. Not only will we cover energy sectors that have traditionally supplied economies across the globe, but we will also cover the energy transition needed to reduce climate change and its impacts. It will examine the economic, regulatory, and social contexts that provide the dynamic backdrop for how both new entrants and incumbent firms can navigate and drive the energy transition. How does the energy economy work, and how fast can it change? How are entrepreneurial start-ups disrupting the energy economy? How are corporations across sectors navigating and potentially driving the energy transition—or not? How are new policies being enacted worldwide impacting billion-dollar decisions? And how are different local communities responding, given the benefits and costs of enormous changes in the energy mix?

This is an investing/finance course, designed to build on skills introduced in the RC finance course, but with an emphasis on how investors should incorporate what have traditionally been considered “non-financial” criteria in their decisions: for example, climate risk, environmental sustainability, minority representation on boards, and even the potential to create social good. Covering both public and private markets, the course will present the unprecedented opportunities that have arisen due to energy transition and other trends through rigorous approaches to business model assessment, valuation, transaction structuring and exits, as well as equity selection and portfolio construction. The course also explores incentives, decision-making, and the crucial problems and opportunities within the industry itself.

This course covers the international law governing the environment and natural resources. The course begins by covering the sources and institutional structure of international environmental law, as well as the fundamental principles governing international environmental law. The course continues by delving into the core treaty regimes in the field, including ozone protection, climate change, and biodiversity and species protection. The course will also address the relationship of international environmental law with other fields of international law.