SYLLABUS AND READING ASSIGNMENTS HARVARD UNIVERSITY GSD 5103/KSG HUT-268 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE DEVELOPMENT KAYDEN Fall 2006 Meets Mondays and Wednesdays, 11:40am - 1:00pm, Gund Hall 111 Schedule for periodic non-required discussion sessions will be announced Jerold S. Kayden Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design Department of Urban Planning and Design Harvard University Graduate School of Design Gund 312, [email protected], 617-496-0830 Office Hours: Mondays 1:20pm - 3:20pm Teaching Fellows: Stephen Ramos, Head Teaching Fellow, D.Des. candidate, [email protected] Lara Belkind, Ph.D. candidate, [email protected] Miwa Matsuo, D.Des candidate, [email protected] Office hours to be announced Teaching Assistant: Radhika Nair, [email protected] I. DESCRIPTION An increasingly complex blend of public and private actions develops today’s cities. This has not always been the case. Years ago, development roles and responsibilities generally tracked paths trod separately by either government or private actors. Now, faced with public resource constraints, shifting public priorities, changed socio-economic conditions, and new political arrangements, public and private actors find themselves collaborating to a much greater degree in producing the built environment. Private developers assume a “public” persona, agreeing to provide physical infrastructure, social amenities, and municipal services once financed and delivered by local government. Developers regularly involve public planners and citizen groups at the project feasibility phase in ways unthinkable not so long ago. Government officials participate in private development activities by way of providing cash subsidies and physical infrastructure, acquiring and disposing of land, and attaching extensive public benefit conditions to development approval. Government actors at times grant some of their authority to private parties as long as such private parties agree to finance and manage achievement of government-determined public benefits. This increased intermingling of public and private roles and responsibilities in urban development compels recognition and reflection by urban planners and designers, private developers, government officials, scholars, and others studying or doing city-GSD 5103/ KSG HUT-268 Syllabus (2006-07) Page 2 of 15 building. The public-private approach requires invention and application of tailored analytic frameworks, complex delivery mechanisms, evolved legal and institutional arrangements, and shrewd political calculations. Private actors must acquire navigational skills befitting a world in which public claims to private profit may be expected to expand. Public actors must grasp the financial realities of private development and deal structures in order to negotiate successful public-private partnerships or impose reasonable burdens at the time of development approval. All actors must better appreciate how public-private collaborations often reassigns public interest oversight and entrepreneurial risk in ways that elicit unintended consequences for the social, economic, and physical development of cities. Through lectures, class discussions, individual and group exercises, and case-study presentations, this course looks at the theories, analytic frameworks, and practices of public and private development. The course begins by equipping students with selected analytic capabilities and approaches essential to thinking about and doing public and private development from various points of view. Students acquire proficiency in, for example, real estate financial analysis and cost-benefit approaches, as well as understandings of legal, institutional, and political arrangements. These analytic capabilities and approaches are subsequently elaborated into decision rules applied to various practice areas of public and private development. Although examples are drawn principally from the United States, the frame for thinking about them is helpful for examining practices in other parts of the world. In particular, the course explores the following practice areas: • provision of public subsidies (federal/state/local grants-in-aid and tax incentives) • public provision of capital infrastructure • public acquisition through eminent domain and other procedures of privately owned land to encourage development of publicly preferred land uses • public disposition through “Request for Proposal” (RFP), auction, and negotiated sales methods of publicly owned or acquired land for privately developed projects • linkage, inclusionary zoning, incentive zoning, and similar privately provided public benefit regulatory programs • community benefit agreements • business improvement districts The exploration of specific practice areas proceeds against a backdrop of consistently posed inquiries, including the following: • when should the public-private development model, rather than either public or private development models alone, be employed? • what analytic approaches are appropriate for thinking usefully about public and private development? • how should the interests of de jure and de facto stakeholders in urban development be taken into account? • how should the collaboration between public and private parties be structured?GSD 5103/ KSG HUT-268 Syllabus (2006-07) Page 3 of 15 • how much should be expected in financial and other terms of either the public or private sectors as they pursue urban development? • what concerns are raised when private developers provide and manage traditionally public facilities and services? Regular Monday and Wednesday classes are lectures with discussion. Periodic, non-required discussion sessions led by a teaching fellow allow for greater exploration of class lectures and readings. Several outside guests provide experience with recent or significant cases involving public and private development. II. REQUIREMENTS A. Class Attendance and Participation Students are expected to attend class. Verbal participation is encouraged, but not required. B. Non-Required Discussion Sessions Teaching fellows will conduct periodic, usually weekly, non-required discussion sessions where students may review class lectures and reading assignments. The schedule for discussion sessions will be announced at the beginning of class. During the early weeks of the