Revitalizing Urban Main Streets: Hyde/Jackson Square & Roslindale Square, Boston
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this urban planning course on reviving neighborhood commercial districts, built around two real Boston case studies, Hyde/Jackson Square and Roslindale Square. The syllabus covers why urban business districts decline, what revitalization strategies have been tried, and the physical design and economic development tools planners use to diagnose a struggling Main Street. Students examine policies, public investments, and interventions aimed at commercial revival, then apply what they learn by drafting an actual revitalization plan for one of the two districts. The course pairs classroom lectures with this applied project, giving a concrete sense of how planners move from diagnosis to policy recommendation. Materials include the full syllabus, readings, and assignment structure, published under MIT's open license with no cost to access.