Sustainable Urban Development Field Study

Catalog description

SRED 6516 is a three-day, in-person field studio in New Orleans that immerses students in the practice of sustainable real estate and urban development. Through guided tours, on-site briefings, and a rapid team project, students analyze how policy, finance, design, and infrastructure shape neighborhoods in a coastal, culturally rich, and climate-exposed city. Site visits span historic districts and emerging corridors to examine transit-oriented development, adaptive reuse, green infrastructure, affordable and mixed-income housing, and resilience investments (energy, water, and stormwater). Students meet practitioners, developers, city officials, community leaders, lenders, and designers—to understand project pipelines, entitlements, incentives, and deal structuring. The studio culminates in a charrette where teams synthesize observations into a concise development concept with program, massing approach, public-realm strategy, preliminary pro forma assumptions, and an implementation pathway.