Regional and International Development

RID courses give students a critical theoretical framework to understand the economic, social, and political context within which many planning decisions are made. Global flows of goods, capital, labor, and information are increasing. Simultaneously, what regions do, how they do it, and their experiences of growth and decline continue to be quite different. This area of concentration is concerned with the interrelated problems of development, including industrialization, urbanization, patterns of regional economic growth and decline, rural and resource-based development, the nature and consequences of geographically uneven development, and the problems of marginalized populations including access to basic urban services and livelihoods.

Students may study regions as a major territorial scale of economic development, or courses that examine international development dynamics. Drawing from cases regionally within the US and globally, faculty teach about an immense range of topics; infrastructure politics, slum redevelopment and urban upgrading, the role of civil society organizations in development, the relationship between urban spatial structure and economic productivity, the drivers of urban growth and regional disparities, disaster management, global waste policy, climate policy, public goods provision and public finance, urban sprawl and accessibility, state-society relations, informality and labor in cities, and spatial justice.

Graduates from RID work in different positions in a wide variety of places including international development organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, the Aga Khan Foundation, GOAL Global, and World Vision; public sector organization like the State of Illinois Redistricting, the LA County Department of Regional Planning, and the City of Toronto; and private sector companies such as the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Nike Italy, Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates, Jones Lange Lasalle, ICF GHK Consulting, and the California Community Reinvestment Corporation.

In addition to opportunities at the organizations listed above, RID students have recently completed internships with UN Habitat in Nairobi, the Housing Department of the City of Johannesburg, Action Aid in Bangladesh, the World Agroforestry Center in Indonesia, the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design (CAUPD) in Beijing, the Chengdu Institute of Planning and Design (CDIPD), the Center for Environmental Planning and Technology University (CEPT) in Ahmedabad, India, the Yunus Center at AIT in Thailand, and the UN-ESCAP in Myanmar.

Students interested in international work benefit greatly from other Luskin initiatives such as Luskin Global Public Affairs and the International Practice Pathway program. Faculty and guest speakers hold periodic salons and workshops to discuss current issues in international development, to develop specific skills, and discuss careers in international development.