Rate My Professor David Hsu

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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5.04/23/2026

Brings real-world relevance to learning.

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About David

David Hsu is Associate Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In Social Science contexts, his work bridges urban planning with data-driven policy analysis. He earned a B.S. in physics from Yale University, an M.S. in applied and engineering physics from Cornell University, an M.Sc. in city design and social science from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Ph.D. in urban design and planning with a certificate in social science and statistics from the University of Washington. Before joining MIT, Hsu taught at the University of Pennsylvania and New York University and held positions in structural engineering, real estate finance, and as a policy analyst in the city governments of New York and Seattle.

Hsu's research examines how planners, policymakers, and advocates shape infrastructure systems linking cities to their environments through physical, technological, and social systems, leveraging technology, data, and analysis. His current efforts focus on air quality sensing in cities, decarbonized buildings as a path to net-zero emissions, governance of distributed energy resources, energy transitions, and municipal climate action. Past projects include evaluating building energy benchmarking policies funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, green and smart infrastructure for stormwater management supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and National Science Foundation, and solar microgrids, lighting, and control technologies in India, Brazil, and Kenya funded by the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design and Fulbright NEXUS. He is writing a book on utilities and infrastructure governance for the University of Chicago Press. Key publications encompass 'Climate policy conflict in the U.S. states: a critical review and way forward' (Climatic Change, 2022), 'Planning the Built Environment and Land Use towards Deep Decarbonization of the United States' (Journal of Planning Literature, 2022), 'Straight out of Cape Cod: The origin of community choice aggregation and its spread to other states' (Energy Research & Social Science, 2022), and 'Comparison of integrated clustering methods for accurate and stable prediction of building energy consumption data' (Applied Energy, 2015). Hsu teaches urban energy systems and policy, urban environmental technology, and infrastructure systems in theory and practice. He chairs the DUSP urban science major, advises the Energy Studies Minor, co-chairs the Campus Fast Forward working group on climate education, and serves as climate coordinator for DUSP and the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, with affiliations in the MIT Energy Initiative, Environmental Solutions Initiative, and Climate and Sustainability Consortium.