Core faculty: Professors Alberto Fuentes, Perry Yang, Gregory Randolph, Yiyi He, and Bruce Stiftel (emeritus).
Many of the world’s cities are confronting rapid urbanization, climate change, demands for environmental justice and equity, and informality in land, housing, and labor markets. The Global Development specialization prepares students to lead the global response to these great 21st century challenges. Our graduates mobilize planning theory, methods, and practice, as well as institutional and political-economic analysis, to promote the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), in particular goal #11: “Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.”
Students in the specialization build an interdisciplinary skill set that integrates expertise in the social, economic, political, and environmental dimensions of international development with a set of core planning skills: community engagement, spatial analysis, and design of the built environment. Coursework embraces cross-regional and comparative analysis, and the identification of lessons for cities and regions everywhere, in the United States and beyond. This training equips students to work with a range of different institutions: international and multilateral organizations, development banks, development consulting firms, global research organizations, non-profit and advocacy groups, and public agencies.
Students are also encouraged to pair the Global Development specialization with another practice area, such as Housing, Community and Economic Development; Environment, Climate and Design; Urban Spatial Analytics; or Transportation and Land Use, depending on their specific interests.
The specialization requires the following two courses:
CP 6704 Introduction to Global Development (annual)
INTA 8803 Political Economy of Development* (typically annual)
Students must also take two additional courses (minimum of 12 credit hours total) from the following list:
Any course required by another MCRP specialization
CP 6233 Sustainable Urban Development (annual)
CP 6442 Equity, Justice and Economic Development (unlikely to be offered soon)
CP 6680 Citizen Participation (last offered 5+ years ago)
CP 6190 Introduction to Climate Change Planning (elective; do our best to offer annually)
CP 6217 Climate Change and the City (annual)
CP 6552 Design of Smart Urban Systems (annual)
ECON 6360 Development Economics
INTA/ECON 8803 Graduate Capstone in Global Development
INTA 6302 International Political Economy
INTA 6202 Comparative Politics
INTA 8803 Human Rights
INTA 6745 Information and Communication Technologies and Global Development
INTA 8803 Energy, Environment and Policy
INTA 6011 International Trade and Technology Transfer
Students with a specific regional interest may also take, as an elective, a graduate-level class focused on development issues in a particular region. These courses include (but are not limited to) the following list. Students should seek approval for any regional studies course not listed below, should they seek to count it as an elective.
INTA 8803 Gov and Pol of Japan
INTA 8803 Gov and Pol of Africa
INTA 8803 Contemporary Mexico
INTA 8803 Latin American Politics
INTA 8803 Latin American Economics
INTA 8803 Government and Politics of China
Students specializing in Global Development may be interested in the Master of Science in Global Development or the Graduate Certificate in Global Development – offered by the School of Economics, Sam Nunn School, and the School of City and Regional Planning. See:
https://globaldev.gatech.edu/ms-global-development
https://globaldev.gatech.edu/graduate-certificate-global-development
