48-742 Planning and Public Policy for the Future of Urbanism
3–6 units, Carnegie Mellon University
The focus of this seminar is to understand how practices and policies from the American plantation to the modern US city have created racial and economic inequality, human exposure to environmental hazards and climate risks, and how community organizing power has and continues to change these conditions at the municipal, state and federal levels. Historically, US urban policy is shaped by public sentiment and public health which often reinforce capitalistic and/or democratic values. And as a result, US cities reinforced national sentiments on race and ethnicity and socioeconomic hierarchy through zoning and other land use policies. Over time urban policy has evolved to reflect findings of scientific/ climate research often shaped by the public's reaction to human health and well-being. As cities have grown in population and become more economically and racially diverse, they have become more influential in state and federal policy-making over the last few decades. Urban planning and policy have been powerful tools using both public sentiment and scientific/ climate research to bring about socially change, as well as the mitigation and adaption efforts to address climate change. Cities are confronting the unlikely, but inevitable evolution and confluence of the topics of race, climate and environment in urban planning and policy-making in US cities, and the political backlash to social and scientific progress over the last seventy years. This course will explore these topics and how community and movement building since the 1960s have led to the a desire for racial equality in cities, national action on environmental justice and global activism on climate change, which is all under threat.
Prerequisites: none listed
Offered: Fall 2026, Fall 2025
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