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 |
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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 |
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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
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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.
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 |
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.
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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 |
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.
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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 |
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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.