Student Run MIT Course

During the fall semester of 2019, a group of graduate students affiliated with the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) realized they shared a common interest in learning and working with communities living in slums and informal settlements. The group came together to create a self-guided for-credit spring course on these urban communities to compensate for the lack of a specialized course in the MCP’s curriculum. Tutored and backed by Prof. Ceasar McDowell, the group designed a syllabus and contacted DUSP faculty to come as invited lecturers and discuss topics related to slums and informal settlements. Their application was approved and the course was formally opened to the MIT community as “11.902 Independent Study Course on Slums” for the Spring 2020 semester.

From DUSP faculty, the course held sessions with professors Bish Sanyal, Balakrishna Rayagopal, Ezra Glenn, Gabriela Carolini, and Sarah Williams. We also had special sessions with Prof. Javier Auyero from University of Texas at Autin, Prof. Ronak Patel from Harvard Medical School, Phd. Candidate Benjamin Bradlow from Brown University, and Dr. Beth Chitekwe-Biti, Managing Director of Slum Dwellers International, as visiting professors.

As COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic outbreak in March, the study group members found that the complexities of social distancing in informal settlements were not being publicly discussed. As part of the course, students started to research and monitor the guidelines and recommendations published by different interest groups (development banks, international agencies, academics,  INGO, etc.), an initiative that evolved to a summer research project