This is an introductory graduate-level course on the issues and concepts underlying environmental policy-making and planning, with a focus on the United States.  Rather than concentrating on one particular type of planning method (e.g., cost-benefit analysis, impact assessment, site design), the course is designed to address recurrent value-based and analytical conflicts that cross the array of various environmental policy-making and planning processes employed in the U.S. and abroad.  The principal goal of the course is to provide students with the knowledge and skills they will need to be thoughtful and creative professional capable of recognizing the key disjunctions in communication and analysis that often hinder the achievement of effective and satisfying environmental policy and planning solutions.  The course is designed to:  provide students the ability to recognize and tease apart the competing values and analytical assumptions made by various stakeholders in environmental policy-making and planning debates; consider how those debates are shaped by and play themselves out within the political, legal, and administrative processes that characterize environmental policy-making and planning in the U.S.; and familiarize students with the various forms of contemporary environmental policy-making and planning practice that they will likely encounter in their professional work.