Course Description

Cities are not random. They are shaped by land use decisions, infrastructure investments, capital flows, regulation, and power, all interacting over time. This course is designed to help you understand how those forces actually work in practice.

Drawing from urban economics, real estate development, policy analysis, and real-world case logic, this course teaches you how to read cities as systems. You will learn why some neighborhoods attract investment while others absorb risk, how zoning and infrastructure quietly shape opportunity, why affordability crises persist even in growing cities, and why community resistance often reflects experience rather than ideology.

Rather than focusing on abstract models, the course emphasizes real decision-making under constraint. It moves between theory and street-level observation to show how trade-offs emerge in rezoning, redevelopment, transit investment, climate risk planning, and long-term asset strategy. The goal is not prediction. It is clarity.

This course is intended for real estate professionals, planners, policymakers, investors, students, and curious readers who want a sharper way to understand cities and the consequences of urban decisions. It provides a structured framework for connecting what you see on the ground to the systems shaping outcomes behind the scenes.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

  • Explain how urban outcomes are shaped by interacting systems, including land use, infrastructure, capital markets, regulation, and power.
  • Analyze real estate and urban development decisions using a systems-level framework rather than isolated metrics or narratives.
  • Identify how zoning, incentives, and public investment influence value creation, displacement risk, and long-term affordability.
  • Evaluate infrastructure and climate risk decisions with attention to both physical exposure and social consequences.
  • Recognize why growth and investment produce both opportunity and resistance, and assess those tensions with greater clarity.
  • Apply urban economic concepts to real-world cases such as rezoning, transit-oriented development, mixed-use projects, and redevelopment sites.
  • Ask better questions before committing capital, drafting policy, or proposing change, including who benefits, who bears risk, and what happens over time.
  • Develop a sharper lens for reading cities as they are, not as they are marketed or modeled.

Course Curriculum

    1. VAST-UP: A Framework for Urban Economics

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    2. Why Cities Form: The Economics of Agglomeration

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    3. Bid-Rent Theory and the Urban Land Gradient

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    4. How Urban Systems Interact: Policy, Capital, and Communities

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    1. Understanding Land Use - Formal Plans and Informal Patterns

    2. Market Clues: Vacancy, Turnover, and Visible Change

    3. Recognizing Disinvestment and Opportunity Zones

    1. Zoning and Value: Planning Tools that Shape Urban Growth

    2. Entitlements, Rights, and Layers of Regulation

    3. Case Study: SoHo or East New York – When Zoning Meets Resistance

    1. The Role of Infrastructure in Urban Value Creation

    2. Transit-Oriented Development: Unlocking Value Around Stations

    3. Case Study: Essex Crossing – Negotiating for Public Good

    1. Identifying Stakeholders: Who Holds Power in a Neighborhood?

    2. Stakeholder Mapping in Action: Tools and Approaches

    3. Community Power: Interviewing and Engaging Local Voices

    1. How Supply and Demand Shape Urban Real Estate

    2. Understanding Incentives: TIFs, Tax Credits, and PILOTs

    3. How to Measure Affordability and Housing Need in a Neighborhood
  • $199.00
  • 38 lessons
  • 3 hours of video content

Who Should Enroll

This course is for people who work with cities, land, or capital and want to understand the forces shaping urban outcomes more clearly.

It is well suited for real estate professionals who want deeper context for zoning, redevelopment, infrastructure investment, and long-term asset risk. Developers, investors, brokers, asset managers, and advisors will benefit from a stronger systems-level lens that goes beyond spreadsheets and market comps.

It is also designed for planners, policymakers, and public sector professionals who want a clearer understanding of how capital responds to regulation, incentives, and infrastructure decisions, and why well-intentioned policies often produce unintended consequences.

Students and early-career professionals interested in real estate, urban development, sustainability, or public policy will find this course useful for building judgment and pattern recognition rather than memorizing formulas.

Finally, this course is appropriate for engaged citizens, advocates, and leaders who want language and structure for understanding the forces shaping their neighborhoods and cities.

This course is not designed for readers seeking quick formulas, step-by-step investment playbooks, or purely technical modeling instruction. It focuses on judgment, systems, and long-term thinking.

Format

The course is delivered as a structured, on-demand video series designed for flexible, self-paced learning.

Each module consists of short, focused video lessons that combine explanation, case logic, and applied insight. Concepts are introduced through real-world examples drawn from cities, neighborhoods, and development decisions rather than abstract models.

The course is designed to be practical and reflective. Learners are encouraged to pause, observe their own cities, and apply the frameworks to real situations they encounter in their work or daily life.

Supporting materials may include reference summaries and frameworks to reinforce key ideas and allow for review over time.

The course can be completed sequentially or revisited by topic, making it useful both as a guided experience and as a reference for ongoing decision-making.