11.301J | Fall 2016 | Graduate

Introduction to Urban Design and Development

Pages

Journal

Document your own thoughts, comments, and challenges on the readings and class material. The journal may be of any length or medium, but should discuss at least two readings/topics.

Assignment 1

Urban Change: Trace the evolution of one place in Boston through time, and predict its future.

Assignment 2

Urban Plans: Evaluate an urban design intervention of your choice, anywhere in the world, to answer the question: Was this a good plan?

SES # TOPICS
1

Introduction, Course Structure and Objectives

Can cities be designed?

Part 1: Forces That Shape Cities
2

Viewpoints On the City

How are cities understood? City themes and city culture, ways of representing cities. The idea of imaging a city from the viewpoint of its inhabitants: Kevin Lynch. Regeneration of Lowell, MA.

Assignment 1 handed out

3

The Forces That Made Boston

How does a city grow? The city viewed as a process of cultural and physical evolution. How underlying forces are given form through design.

4

Walking Tour of Boston

Required field trip: Meet at the Prudential Center Observatory lobby. Tour concludes in the North End for lunch.

5

Economic Forces and Urban Form

The city viewed as a business. Land use, land value, and urban development. Understanding how uses are located: the bid rent curve; cities as central places. Functional patterns of market and form. From the walkable city to edge city.

6

Social Foces and Urban Form

The city form the viewpoint of communities and their residents. Interrelationships of neighborhoods, class association and form. Public housing, Hope VI, Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, Boston.

Identify location for Assignment 1

7

State Forces and Urban Form

The city viewed by those in power. Eminent domain. Public development and its arenas: infrastructure, redeveloment, and housing. How is public development financed and carried out? City design as a political endeavor: from Paris, New York, and New London.

8

Recitation Session, Assignment 1: Urban Change

Research methods and topic development. How do you document urban change over time, and into the future? What resources are available? Using graphics to support an argument. References and citations. Attendance strongly recommended.

9

City Making I: Planning the Formal City

Land allocation, use, and regulation of private development: zoning and incentives to influence what the market provides. Evolution of land use control to shape the “good” city and protect scares resources. Examples: New York and Sao Paulo.

10

Case Study: Private Development and Public Benefits

Guest: Kairos Shen, former Planning Director, City of Boston

The city is made largely by individual private development and projects, working within a framework of zonging and other regulations. Are these regulations sufficient to protect the public interest? What additional public benefits can the city expect developers to provide? Examples of projects and controversies in Boston.

11

City Making II: Non-Planning the Informal City

Guest: Dr. Jota Samper

Informal settlements amke up one-third of the world’s urban population. What is this form of urbanization? How can design affect security and regeneration of these neighborhoods? Examples: Medellin and Rio de Janeiro.

12

City Making III: Public-Private Partnerships

The entreprenurial viewpoint. Joining public and private interests. Revitalizing downtowns and neighborhoods with new incentives, formulas for development, and types of projects. Examples: Vancouver.

13

Recitation Session

Discussion will focus on the readings. Please submit a journal reflection on the readings thus far. Questions to consider: can you design places without designing buildings? Which tools of urban designs have shaped the place you are examining for the first assignment? Required session.

14

Field Visit: Boston Redevelopment Authority

Host: Prataap Patrose

_

Meet at BRA offices, Boston City Hall.

_

15

City Making IV: The Design and Development Process

Design as a tool of analysis, synthesis and decision-making. The importance of urban visions and who makes them. The development process: how is good design achieved?

16

Discussion of Exercise 1, Student Presentations

Assignment 1 due

Part 2: Models of City-Making
17

Values of Contemporary Urbanism

Urban design as a cultural language. Recurring themes: public and private; machine and nature; density and dispersion; local culture and global; the rich and the poor. Recurring elements: neighborhoods, production spaces, markets, streets, public spaces, transport spaces, and symbols. Class discussion on form, human behavior, and value systems.

Assignment 2 handed out

18

Tradition

The grid and the line. The confluence of culture, geography, and form: Colonial towns in New England and Georgia, and their legacy. Neo-traditionalism: Poundbury, and British new town design.

19

The Art of Placemaking

Symbolic places and form. From Baroque Rome to the Chicago and Worlds Columbian Expositions: City Beautiful and its continuing impact. Contemporary art of creative place-making: Georgy Kepes, Otto Piene, and CAVES at MIT.

20

WaterFire, Walking Tour of Providence, R.I.

Host: Barnaby Evans, artist, creator, and producer of WaterFire.

21

Case Study: Making a 21st Century Public Realm

Guest: Barnaby Evans, artist, creator, and producer of WaterFire

22

Case Study: Mid-Century Modern City

Guest: Professor Hashim Sarkis, Dean of the School of Arcitecture and Planning at MIT

The architecture of urban design: Set, Neutra, and the ongoing legacy of Latin American urbanism.

23

The Efficient City

The city as a mechanism for production. The utopian industrial city: from Pullman to the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Impacts on urban development policy: public housing, highways, and urban renewal. The outcome in China: a city for 130 million people.

24

Case Study: Green Development

Guest: Bill Browning, CEO, Terrapin Bright Green

25

The City in Nature

How do ideas of nature influence the way cities are perceived and built? How natural processes and urban form interact. The search for a green, sustainable city. The Garden City, new town, and ecocity models. The contemporary urbanist (density) vs. ecologist (sprawl) debate.

26

The Secure City

Public safety vs. private safety. Impact of security on urban design. Debates on gated communities in Latin America, Asia, Middle East, and North America.

27

Recitation Session

Please submit a journal (any length) reflecting on the readings in the second half of the course. Questions to consider: What planning strategies/tools could be employed to reshape the city or suburbs? What strategies/tools of change are in the plan you are studying? Required session.

28

Experience City

Experience development as a force in urban design. Narrative places. The engagement of information and media in urban form. Disney World to Dubai.

29

Productive Neighborhoods

Putting a “nervous system” into the city, and its effects on human behavior, activities and form. Smart urban systems that are sensed, continuously analyzed, and can incrementally respond over time. Stochastic as opposed to visionary urban design. Implications for theory and future practice: Rise of Innovation Districts: Seoul, Spain, Guadalajara, Mexico.

30

The Good City

Reconciling ideals and the real. Discussion of languages of urban design and development, and their applicability in practice. Whose values should the city reflect?

Student Panel Session

31

Wrap Up, Discussion of Assignment 2

Assignment 2 due

SES # TOPICS READINGS
1 Introduction

Robert Fishman. “The Open and the Enclosed: Shifting Paradigms in Modern Urban Design” in Banerjee, Tridib, and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, eds. Companion to Urban Design. Routledge, 2011. ISBN: 9781138776548.

Ratti, Carlo, and Anthony Townsend. “The Social Nexus."Scientific American 305, no. 3 (2011): 42-48.

Optional

Buy at MIT Press “City and Modernism”, “Notes on Urban Space”, and “Space, Territory, and Perception” in Maki, Fumihiko, Mark Mulligan, and Eduard F. Sekler. Nurturing Dreams: Collected Essays on Architecture and the City. MIT Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780262135009.

Part 1: Forces That Shape Cities
2 Viewpoints on the City

“Introduction, Word Game, Fixes” in Clay, Grady. Close-Up: How to Read the American City. University of Chicago Press, 1980. ISBN: 9780226109459.

Buy at MIT Press “City Image and Its Elements” in Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. Vol. 11. MIT Press, 1960. ISBN: 9780262120043.

Koch, Regan, and Alan Latham. “Presenting and Imagining the City” in Paddison, Ronan, and Eugene McCann, eds. Cities and Social Change: Encounters with Contemporary Urbanism. Sage, 2014. ISBN: 9781848601109.

3 The Forces That Made Boston

Buy at MIT Press “Form Values in Urban History” in Lynch, Kevin. Good City Form. MIT Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780262620468.

The following are general references for this lecture and for Assignment 1. You should study these to help select and research your site:

Whitehill, Walter Muir. Boston: A Topographical History. Belknap Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780674002685.

Campbell, Robert, and Peter Vanderwarker. Cityscapes of Boston: An American City Through Time. Houghton Mifflin, 1992. ISBN: 9780395581193.

Buy at MIT Press Seasholes, Nancy S. Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston. MIT Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780262194945.

Buy at MIT Press Haglund, Karl. Inventing the Charles River. MIT Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780262083072.

4 Walking Tour of Boston No readings
5 Economic Forces and Urban Form

“The Urban System and Urban Structure” in Morrill, Richard. The Spatial Organization of Society. Duxbury Press, 1974. ISBN: 9780878720576.

“The City as a Growth Machine” in Logan, John R., and Harvey Molotch. Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. University of California Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780520254282.

Sherman, Roger. “Counting on Change: Property” in Varnelis, Kazys, ed. The Infrastructural City: Networked Ecologies in Los Angeles. Actar, 2008. ISBN: 9788496954793.

6 Social Forces and Urban Form

Lipman, Mark and Leah Mahon. Holding Ground: The Rebirth of Dudley Street. New Day Films, 1996.

“The Uses of City Neighborhoods” in Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Vintage, 2016. ISBN: 9780679741954.

Sklar, Holly. “Creating a Sustainable Urban Village: The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative,” and “Real Insurance.” Orion 15, no. 4 (Autumn 1996): 28-38.

7 State Forces and Urban Form

“Grand Design” in Sutcliffe, Anthony. The Autumn of Central Paris: The Defeat of Town Planning, 1850-1970. London: Edward Arnold, 1970.

“The Warp on the Loom” in Caro, Robert. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. Knopf, 1974. ISBN: 9780394720241.

Langdon, Philip. “Eminent Domain Goes to Court.” Planning 71, no. 4 (2005): 12-15.

8 Recitation Session, Assignment 1: Urban Change No readings
9 City Making I: Planning the Formal City

“Designing Cities Without Designing Buildings” in Barnett, Jonathan. An Introduction to Urban Design. HarperCollins, 1982. ISBN: 9780064301145.

Muschamp, Herbert. “Reaching For Power Over Streets And Sky.” The New York Times. May 14, 2000.

Neuman, Michael. “Does Planning Need the Plan?Journal of the American Planning Association 64, no. 2 (1998): 208-220.

Optional

Biderman, Ciro, Paulo Sandroni, and Martim O. Smolka. “Large-Scale Urban Interventions: The Case of Faria Lima in Sao Paulo.” Land Lines. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy: April 2006.

Sandroni, Paul. “Socially Sustainable Urban Development: The Case of Sao Paulo.” Blog post, 2010.

-- –. “Urban Development, Increasing Land Prices and Instruments to Avoid Exclusion in Sao Paulo, Brazil.” Blog post, n.d.

10 Case Study: Private Development and Public Benefits No readings
11 City Making II: Non-Planning the Informal City

Roy, Ananya. “Urban Informality: Toward an Epistemology of Planning.” Journal of the American Planning Association 71, no. 2 (2005): 147-158.

Pages 1-20 in Davis, Mike. Planet of Slums. Verso, 2007.

Blanco, Carolina, and Hidetsugu Kobayashi. “Urban Transformation in Slum Districts Through Public Space Generation and Cable Transportation at Northeastern Area: Medellin, Colombia.” Journal of International Social Research. 2009.

12 City Making III: Public-Private Partnerships

Buy at MIT Press “Entrepreneurial Cities and Maverick Developmers, Deal Making, Getting and Spending” in Frieden, Bernard J., and Lynne B. Sagalyn. Downtown, Inc: How America Rebuilds Cities. MIT Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780262061285.

Beasley, Larry. “Living First in Downtown Vancouver.” APA Zoning News, April 2000.

City of Vancouver. “Home, Property, and Development.” 2017. (Skim website)

Berg, Nate. “The Olympics and The City.” Places Journal, February 2010.

Optional

Sarkissian, Wendy. “EcoDensity Policy Undermined Planning In Vancouver.” CityHallWatch. January 12, 2014.

13 Recitation Session No readings
14 Field Visit: Boston Redevelopment Authority

Campbell, Robert. “After the Big Dig, the Big Question: Where’s the Vision?” The Boston Globe. May 26, 2002.

-- –. “A Walk in Progress: A Tour of the (More or Less) Finished Sections of the new Greenway Reveals That Intentions Have Been Met - And Missed.” The Boston Globe. December 2, 2007.

Rose Kennedy Greenway. Browse website, especially “About” and “Greenway Parks.”

15 City Making IV: The Design and Development Process No readings
16 Discussion of Assignment 1 No readings
Part 2: Models of City Making
17 Values of Contemporary Urbanism

Kostof, Spiro. The City Assembled: The Elements of Urban Form Through History. Thames & Hudson, 2005. ISBN: 9780500281727.

The following are general readings for Assignment 2:

Ryan, Brent D. “Reading Through a Plan: A Visual Interpretation of What Plans Mean and How They Innovate.” Journal of the American Planning Association 77(4), 309-327.

Baer, William C. “General Plan Evaluation Criteria: An Approach to Making Better Plans.” Journal of the American Planning Association 63, no. 3 (1997): 329-344.

18 Tradition

“New Towns in New England” and “Carolina and Georgia” in Reps, John William. Town Planning in Frontier America. University of Missouri Press, 1980. ISBN: 9780826203168.

Kunstler, James Howard. “Home From Nowhere.” The Atlantic. September 1996.

“Master Plan for Poundbury Development in Dorchester” in Martin, Christopher. Prince Charles and the Architectural Debate. St. Martin’s Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780312040482.

“The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh Visit Poundbury.” The Duchy of Cornwall. Press release, March 8, 1998.

19 The Art of Placemaking

Sitte, Camillo, George Roseborough Collins, and Christiane Crasemann Collins. Camillo Sitte: The Birth of Modern City Planning: with a Translation of the 1889 Austrian Edition of His City Planning According to Artistic Principles. Rizzoli, 1986. ISBN: 9780486451183.

“The Monumental City” in Barnett, Jonathan. The Elusive City: Five Centuries of Design, Ambition and Miscalculation. HarperCollins, 1986. ISBN: 9780064301558.

Read: Executive Summary and Introduction in Markusen, Ann, and Anne Gadwa. Creative Placemaking National Endowment for the Arts, 2010.

Optional

Supovitz, Marjorie, and Judith Wechler. Gyorgy Kepes: The MIT Years 1945-1977. MIT Press Visual Arts Series, 1978. ISBN: 9780262610278.

Bedoya, Robert. “Placemaking and the Politics of Belonging and Dis-belonging.” Grantmakers in the Arts Reader 24, no. 1 (Winter 2013).

20 WaterFire, Walking Tour of Providence Frenchman, Dennis. “Event-Places in North America: City Meaning and Making (PDF-1.6MB).” Places Journal 16, no. 3. Fall 2004.
21 Case Study: Making a 21st Century Public Realm Review website and descriptions of placemaking: WaterFire
22 Case Study: Mid-Century Modern City Introduction, Chapter 8 in Mumford, Eric Paul, and Hashim Sarkis, eds. Josep Lluís Sert: The Architect of Urban Design, 1953-1969. Yale University Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780300120653.
23 The Efficient City

Ulfelder, Jay. “China Isn’t Socialist, It’s High Modernist.” Dart-Throwing Chimp. March 18, 2014.

Johnson, Ian. “As Beijing Becomes a Supercity, the Rapid Growth Brings Pains.” The New York Times. July 19, 2015.

“World of Tomorrow” in Bush, Donald. The Streamlined Decade. Braziller, 1975. ISBN: 9780807607930.

“A Contemporary City” and “The Working Day” in Corbusier, Le. The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning. Courier Corporation, 1987. ISBN: 9780486253329.

24 Case Study: Green Development

Walker, Jonce. “Biophilic Urban Acupuncture: The Importance of Biophilia in Urban Places.” The Blog. Terrapin Bright Green. October 21, 2015.

Gochman, Sam. “Seeking Parks, Plazas, and Spaces: The Allure of Biophilia in Cities (PDF-2 MB).” Terrapin Bright Green. June 2016.

Fishman, Robert. “Beyond Sprawl: The New American Metropolis” in Boelling, Lars and Thomas Sieverts, eds. In the Middle of the Edge: From the Suburb to Sprawl to the Regional City. Wuppertal, Germany: Mueller and Busmann, 2004.

25 The City in Nature

Mostafavi, Mohsen. “Landscapes of Urbanism” and Corner, James. “Landscape Urbanism” in Mostafavi, Mohsen, and Ciro Najle, eds. Landscape Urbanism: A Manual for the Machinic Landscape. London: Architectural Association, 2003.

Waldheim, Charles. “Landscape as Urbanism” and Shane, Grahame. “The Emergence of Landscape Urbanism” in Waldheim, Charles, ed. The Landscape Urbanism Reader. Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. ISBN: 9781568984391.

Spirn, Anne Whiston. “Ecological Urbanism” in Banerjee, Tridib, and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, eds. Companion to Urban Design. Routledge, 2011. ISBN: 9781138776548

Optional

Joss, Simon, and Arthur P. Molella. “The Eco-City as Urban Technology: Perspectives on Caofeidian International Eco-City (China).” Journal of Urban Technology 20, no. 1 (2013): 115-137.

Girot, Christophe. “Vers une nouvelle nature” in Institute for Landscape Architecture. Landscape Architecture in Mutation: Essays on Urban Landscape. GTA Verlag, 2005. ISBN: 9783856761578.

26 The Secure City

Davis, Michael. “Fortress Los Angeles: The Militarization of Urban Space” in Sorkin, Michael, ed. Variations on a Theme Park: THe New American CIty and the End of Public Space. Hill and Wang, 1992. ISBN: 9780374523145.

“Unlocking the Gated Community” in Low, Setha. Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America. Routledge, 2004. ISBN: 9780415950411.

Graham, Stephen. “Cities as Battlespace: The New Military Urbanism.” City 13, no. 4 (2009): 383-402.

Optional

Chapter 5 in Low, Setha, and Neil Smith, eds. The Politics of Public Space. Routledge, 2013. 9780415951395.

Cases from Cairo, Oakland, Jerusalem, Lahore, and Beirut in “Militarized Cities.” The Funambulist no. 1. September - November 2015.

27 Recitation Session Please submit a journal (any length) reflecting on the readings in the second half of the course. Questions to consider: what planning strategies/tools could be employed to reshape the city or suburbs? What strategies/tools of change are in the plan you are studying?
28 Experience City

“Time-Space Compressiong and the Postmodern Condition” in The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Wiley-Blackwell, 1991. ISBN: 9780631162940.

Brown, Denise Scott and Robert Venturi. Architecture as Signs and Systems: For a Mannerist Time. Belknap, 2004. ISBN: 9780674015715.

Buy at MIT Press Klingmann, Anna. Brandscapes: Architecture in the Experience Economy. MIT Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780262113038.

29 Productive Neighborhoods

“Advanced Services, Information Flows, and the Global City” in Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture. John Wiley & Sons, 2011. ISBN: 9781405196864.

Frenchman, Dennis and William J. Mitchell. “The Digital City” in Ratti, Carlo, ed. Digital Water Pavilion at Zaragoza’s Milla Digital and Expo 2008. Milan: Electa, 2008. ISBN: 9788837064686.

Katz, Bruce, and Julie Wagner. “The Rise of Innovation Districts: A New Geography of Innovation in America.” Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, May (2014).

Optional

MIT Senseable City Lab. Underworlds.

Davis, Nicola. “The MIT Lab Flushing Out A City’s Secrets.” The Guardian. March 27, 2016.

30 The Good City Buy at MIT Press “Between Heaven and Hell” in Lynch, Kevin. Good City Form. MIT Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780262620468.
31 Wrap Up, Discussion of Assignment 2 No Readings

Course Meeting Times

Two lectures/week, 1.5 hours/lecture

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this course, but permission of the instructor is required.

Course Description

This course introduces graduate students to theories about how cities are formed and the practice of urban design and development, using U.S. and international examples. The course is organized into two parts:

Part 1 analyzes the forces, which act to shape and to change cities. Starting with Boston as a reference, we will examine key forces affecting contemporary urban development, such as: market economics, social forces, industrial production, the natural environment, public development, private development, and incentives to encourage good design. Finally we will consider how cities define a vision for their future and how these are articulated in plans and proposals. Lectures will be supplemented by guest presentations, case studies, and field trips.

Part 2 surveys key models of physical form and social intervention that have been deployed to resolve competing forces acting on the city. the models reflect discrete languages of city making. We will discuss the evolution of each model, practical consequences, and potentials for resolving emerging urban problems and opportunities. The models include: tradition, art, efficiency, ecology, security, emotion, and intelligence. The application of the models will be illustrated in historic and contemporary project cases from Europe. Asia, Latin America, and the U.S.

Grading

Work for this course will include readings, class participation, and two papers related to the two units of the course. Students will also be required to keep a simple journal reflecting on the readings. Student grades will be determined as follows:

  • Research papers and journal assignment: 75%
  • Participation in classes, discussion sessions, and field trips: 25%

Optional Recitation for Credit

For students with a special interest in urban design, or a desire to delve more deeply into particular topics in the subject, we will offer an optional recitation this year. The recitation will give participants the opportunity to discuss and debate representative cases related to the concepts raised in class and reflect on the readings in the syllabus. The recitation will also provide guidance and support on the two required research/design papers.

Recitation will meet for one hour on Fridays, 4 to 5 times throughout the semester, at a time to be determined with the group. Students electing to participate in the recitation will be expected to attend the sessions regularly and to participate in the discussions. Since there is limited time for discussion in class, we urge students to consider this option, which will enrich your learning.

Course Info

As Taught In
Fall 2016
Level
Learning Resource Types
Written Assignments