Courses in: Transportation

Topics in Urban Design

This course, "City Streets and Urban Landscapes," will immerse students in a study of established and emerging urban design priorities for city streets. Streets and sidewalks operate as the most public of our city’s public spaces, at once forming connective tissue between different locations while also creating borders and boundaries.

Advanced GIS: Interactive Web Mapping and Spatial Data Visualization

Students will learn the fundamentals of web development with HTML, CSS, and Javascript, and github.   Using Free and Open Source Spatial Data tools, students will learn to bring their maps to life on the web as interactive experiences.  Use tools like QGIS, CartoDB and PostGIS.  Final project will be an interactive web map around an Urban topic of your choosing.

This course will involve programming, some experience is preferred but not required. Contact the instructor for introductory coding resources to review before class.   Personal Laptops are required.

Public Policy and Planning in New York

There is no profession more noble than public service, and no arena more exciting than New York. Our objective is to gain insight into how our city and state governments make decisions, informed by a foundational and wide-ranging understanding of the forces at work and issues that face policymakers today. I am teaching this class because of my longstanding—and ever-expanding—interest in the practice of public policy and a deeply held belief that the effectiveness of our government depends on the quality of those who serve in it.

Urban Transportation Planning

This course will offer an introduction to transportation planning, including both theoretical and practical approaches.  This course will provide an understanding of the evolution and role of urban public transportation modes, systems and services.  Additional topics will be introduced, depending upon speaker availability. Subjects in general will include characteristics of different modes (rail, bus, air), scheduling, budgeting, Federal grants, modeling, route design considerations, transit oriented development, public involvement, and project development.

Transportation Policymaking

This course will provide an understanding of core legal concepts and selected legal issues in advancing urban transportation and infrastructure projects. Reviewing cutting edge projects in NYC and in other cities, the course will seek to give students a better understanding of legal liability risks and litigation vulnerabilities attendant to innovative projects.

Transportation, Land Use, and Urban Form

This is an introductory course in urban transportation planning. The course is divided into 3 parts. Part One is a foundational review of theories and research about the complex relationships among transportation, land use and urban form.  Part Two examines certain key factors that today’s transportation planners deal with as transportation and land use interact in the context of planning and projects. Part Three involves a review of some of the most notable transportation and land use plans, projects and problems facing the New York City metropolitan region.