Gaoming Studio: China
This MIT urban planning studio examines Gaoming, a district in the fast growing Pearl River Delta region of China, where local design institutes and a Hong Kong planning firm have already proposed a new central area near the river. Students build on that groundwork by focusing specifically on the waterfront, developing planning and design options that integrate hydrological factors into every layer of a modern district: residential, commercial, and industrial land use, watershed and ecosystem protection, transportation, tourism, and recreation. The course materials, provided by MIT OpenCourseWare, include studio assignments and project briefs used in the actual classroom exercise, giving a sense of how planners weigh water management against urban growth pressures in a rapidly developing Chinese region. No enrollment or certificate is offered; the course is a self-paced set of open materials for independent study.