Urban Planning and Development (UPD)
UPD 5000 - Foundations of Planning
3 Credits
This course is designed to provide the incoming planning students with the foundational concepts important to planning education and practice. It will explore the historical underpinnings of cities and city life that reveal why and how modern planning practice came into play. In doing so, students will also examine land use, transportation, economic analysis, housing, the role of government in planning, community-based plans, citizen-led planning and how contemporary planning can be shaped by poverty, race, and social class. Students will learn first-hand how to do field work within a community and additionally experience the role that consensus building plays in group decision making through a semester-long neighborhood-based group project. Offered every fall.
UPD 5010 - Planning & Development Theory
3 Credits
This course explores the literature on planning and development theories. We will examine several themes: 1) historical foundations and justifications of urban planning; 2) values and normative frameworks in planning; 3) the factors that contribute to the growth or decline of city-focused regions. Readings pull from planning, economic geography, sociology, and urban studies to explain the spatial, industrial, and people-focused patterns of development in cities, suburbs, and regions. Offered every fall.
UPD 5020 - Land Use Planning & Analysis
3 Credits
This course provides students with an overview of how land use decisions are made, and activities involved in land use planning. Starting with the history and theory of land use planning, this course develops a conceptual framework for how-the often controversial-decisions are made, exploring the issues from the perspectives of the public and the private sectors. Students examine values and objectives behind the different approaches to land management and the role that the local government plays in establishing a land use program. Students also consider the necessary information required to develop a land use plan, examining the different types of data and how they might be used. Students ultimately examine land use practices at the site level, exploring development issues for a series of specific land uses. Following this class, students will have the necessary analytical skills to examine a series of land use development issues. (Offered every spring.)
UPD 5030 - Land Use Law
3 Credits
This course will focus on the legal and planning problems of allocating and developing land, primarily in metropolitan areas in the United States. Special attention will be paid to the tension between the values of free enterprise and private property on the one hand and demands for public open space, control of urban sprawl, and free choice in the location of residence on the other hand. Specific topics to be covered include the extent of and limitations on governmental power to regulate the use of land; traditional planning, zoning and subdivision regulations; special techniques including use of “wait and see” regulatory devices, development exactions, historic preservation districts, transfer of development rights and “new urbanism” planning; impact of environmental protection legislation; growth of state-wide statutory regulation, including “smart growth” legislation; neighborhood collaborative planning, and non-adversarial dispute resolute techniques. (Offered in Fall)
UPD 5100 - Research Methods
3 Credits
In this class, we will explore the basic methods used in planning and policy analysis. Whether as an urban planner or private developer/consultant, we all encounter policy reports and documents and are required to decipher them at some point in our careers. Many of us will also write these reports or use them as source material for grant proposals or funding requests, thus understanding the methods is essential to our work. This course provides the foundation for planning and policy analysis, examining the basic methods used in addressing planning and development problems. (Offered every fall.)
UPD 5110 - Quantitative Planning Methods
3 Credits
This course is designed as an introduction to statistical analysis for graduate students in urban planning and development. It is offered in collaboration with the Biostatistics program in the School of Public Health. Planning students will work alongside public health and health administration graduate students. Topics include basic probability and descriptive statistics, statistical inference and hypothesis tests, linear and logistic regression, and non-parametric statistics. Content is taught for conceptual understanding and application. Statistical software is used throughout the course.
UPD 5120 - Planner's Use of Information
3 Credits
Students learn how to collect and use spatial and non spatial data to address urban planning and development policy questions facing local communities. The course covers all the different methods that planners use to analyze the impacts and identify issues associated with planning and the development process. This class satisfies the research methods requirement for the Master of Science in Urban Planning and Development.
UPD 5200 - Local Economic Development Policy & Practice
3 Credits
This course provides an introduction to the context, theory, process, and practice of local economic development planning. Topics covered include theoretical and conceptual explanations of the economic development process; international, national, and regional factors affecting local economic development; federal, state, and local roles; contrasting economic development approaches and methods for planning and practice; equity, participation, and partnerships in economic development; and financing tools for local economic development. (Offered every spring.)
UPD 5220 - Infrastructure & Plan Implementation
3 Credits
This course explores various systems and services that support a city and region and how function. How are they financed? How do they interact with other systems? These include all systems and services that engage in some planning function, including transportation, water, sewer, and schools. Offered every spring.
UPD 5250 - Planning & Development in St. Louis
3 Credits
This course examines the major demographic, economic and social trends that have characterized St. Louis. It will be relevant to those with an interest in city planning and community development, but also urban history, economic development, housing and related topics. Students will study plans and projects, some of which were implemented and some not. The intent is to examine the ingredients of successful plans, programs and projects; appreciation for the consequences (both intended and unintended) of development decisions; and a better understanding of the city and the region.
UPD 5260 - Real Estate & Economic Development
3 Credits
The purpose of this course is to teach students the fundamentals of real estate and development planning, with a focus on the interaction between public and private sectors. The desired result is to provide the students with an overview of both perspectives and strategies so that those going into either the related public or private sector fields have a broad background of how development initiatives work within the context of the public process.
UPD 5350 - Environmental Planning
3 Credits
This course is designed to present the concepts and frameworks used for environmental planning. This course will present both the contexts within which environmental planning takes place and the frameworks, tools and substantive knowledge with which environmental planners plan. The course uses examples from urban, metropolitan and regional environmental settings. Course objectives include: exploring the relationships between ecological conditions and human settlements and to understand how human activities affect these conditions; becoming familiar with the history and values of ecological/environmental planning; and becoming familiar with the methods for planning to mitigate environmental negatives and restore and sustain ecological integrity and human quality of life.
UPD 5360 - Sustainability & the Built Environment
3 Credits
In 1987 the World Commission on Environment and Development (aka the Bruntland Commission) was convened to address the growing concerns about environmental degradation in light of escalating human development. From that came the call to switch the world policy focus toward a more sustainable future. Sustainable development is most commonly defined as meeting the needs of our present generation while taking the needs of the future generation into consideration. The concept appears simply. Yet, the challenge lies in how we get there. What does it mean to meet the needs of our present generation? How do we define those needs? And what does it mean to take the needs of a future generation into consideration at the same time? What does all of that look like? Therein lies the policy challenge. As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, the world looks vastly different from the time when.
UPD 5450 - Community Development Finance
3 Credits
This course provides students with conceptual and practical tools needed to participate in the decision-making for and financing of projects, including commercial real estate, that relate to community development goals. The course introduces students to the policy and practice of community development finance, with an emphasis on the resources available to assist for-profit and not-for-profit private sector developers to undertake community development projects in markets and with populations outside of the financial mainstream. The course will include the fundamentals of decision-making about the financing of community development (i.e. real estate loan/investment underwriting), development goals, such as the building of affordable housing, community facilities, charter schools and commercial real estate development. Topics covered with include Community Development Block Grant, HOME Investment Partnership funding, Low Income Housing Tax Credits, Tax-Exempt Bond Financing, New Markets Tax Credits, and others. Moving course from Spring offering to Fall only offering.
UPD 5500 - Real Estate Finance
3 Credits
The course provides practical working knowledge and capabilities in the methods and techniques used in the financial analysis of real estate development projects. We will spend the majority of our time understanding, practicing, and applying present-value mathematics, the concept of return, discounted cash flow analysis, project cost and benefits, and a complete financial analysis of a real estate development project. We will develop Excel spreadsheet capabilities and use them in all the analysis steps. Finally, we will review the loan process for commercial real estate projects. This course provides a hands-on approach to real estate finance and emphasizes the knowledge and analysis required for direct investment in real estate projects. This course will provide the skills necessary to evaluate potential opportunities in real estate. (Offered every fall.)
UPD 5900 - Planning & Development Studio
3 Credits
This course is interdisciplinary and open to students in urban planning and design, architecture, law, business, social work, and public health. Students and faculty from Saint Louis University and Washington University work in interdisciplinary teams to respond to projects in collaboration with local partners in the St. Louis region. During class, faculty members and subject experts present on multi-disciplinary aspects of development projects to help guide the work of class teams.(Offered every fall.)
UPD 5910 - Internship
1 Credit (Repeatable for credit)
Students are required to complete an internship during their course of study. The internship must be approved by their program advisor and must involve at least six weeks of full-time work involving a planning or development related project. At the end of their internship students are expected to write a 2,500-word essay discussing their work/project and how it relates to planning and development. In this essay, students will apply classroom knowledge to the internship experience. (Offered as needed.)
UPD 5930 - Special Topics
3 Credits (Repeatable for credit)
UPD 5960 - Capstone
2 Credits
Student selects a project to evaluate planning issues and design planning alternatives toward a development or redevelopment. The formal plan is accompanied by an analytical report. The report is presented in public forum. Offered every semester.
UPD 5980 - Graduate Independent Study in Urban Planning and Development
1-3 Credits (Repeatable for credit)