Land Use & Public Finance in Cleveland and its Suburbs

This site documents the efforts of students in two graduate level urban planning courses – one at MIT and one at Morgan State University – as they learn together about land use and local government finance through the case study of the Cleveland region. This initiative is part of a multi-year partnership between Morgan State University’s Master’s in City and Regional Planning and MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

The two Spring 2025 courses are CREP 506 Land Use Planning at Morgan State, and 11.441 Local Public Finance at MIT. The students went on a site visit in Cleveland to learn about how cities and suburbs make their land use plans in light of the fiscal consequences – both for costs and revenues. The goal was to see how land use planning and local public finance are interrelated. The effort chose Cleveland as a third city roughly equidistant from Boston and Baltimore which has good local transit to facilitate moving around and interesting planning issues.   

The experience began earlier in the semester as both classes read relevant material on Cleveland.  Students recorded short videos to introduce themselves and provide background on relevant topics.

You can view student-made videos here. Background reading on the topics are here. News about the project will be here as it becomes available. Finally, you can learn about the students in the two classes here.