Development, Planning, and Implementation: The Dialectic of Theory and Practice
MIT's graduate seminar examines why development and planning theories so often fail or twist in practice. The course is built around twelve implementation puzzles drawn from real projects and policies, used as case material for testing whether existing planning and development theory actually explains what practitioners encounter on the ground. Students read theoretical texts alongside practitioner accounts and debate where the gap between design and execution comes from, then work toward re-theorizing planning processes based on what the puzzles reveal. Materials include the syllabus, readings list, and assignment prompts as published on MIT OpenCourseWare. The course treats practitioners as a source of evidence rather than an afterthought, making it as much about the sociology of implementation as about planning theory itself. No lectures are recorded; the course is self-study from primary materials, free to access with no certificate offered.