Ecological Urbanism
MIT's graduate seminar looks at how city design and planning can absorb the tools of ecology, the study of how organisms interact with their environments, to address problems like climate change, rising sea levels, shrinking oil reserves, and growing energy demand. Readings pair urban planning theory with environmental science, examining how design choices at the scale of a neighborhood or a region change a city's resilience and its residents' health and safety. The course materials, published through MIT OpenCourseWare, include the syllabus, weekly reading lists, and assignments used in the actual class, letting you follow the same case studies and design problems MIT students worked through. There is no instructor interaction or certificate, but the full set of course documents is free to download and reuse under a Creative Commons license.