Theory of City Form

Lecture Notes

Below is a table listing the lectures given in this course. Excluding the introductory and concluding lecture, each of the linked pages includes a lecture summary for the class, pages from the class handout, referenced texts from the lecture, as well as a list of precedents, examples, and works discussed during the class. The introductory lecture provides a brief overview of the course, the covered topics, and the course structure. The concluding lecture is a review of the entire course, with emphasis on common themes and changes in theory of city form over time.

LEC #	TOPICS
1	Introduction
Section One: The Nature of City Form Theory
2	Normative Theory I: The City as Supernatural
3	Normative Theory II: The City as Machine
4	Normative Theory III: The City as Organism
5	Descriptive and Functional Theory
6	Dimensions, Patterns, Agreements, Structure, and Syntax
Section Two: The Form of the Modern City
7	The Early Cities of Capitalism
8	Transformations I: London
9	Transformations II: Paris
10	Transformations III: Vienna and Barcelona
11	Transformations IV: Chicago
12	Transformations V: Panopticism, St. Petersburg and Berlin
13	Utopianism as Social Reform and Built Form
14	20th Century Realizations: Russian and Great Britain
Section Three: Current Theory and Practice
15	City Form and Process
16	Spatial & Social Structure I: Theory
17	Spatial & Social Structure II: Bipolarity
18	Spatial & Social Structure III: Colony & Post-colony
19	Form Models I: Modern and Post-modern Urbanism
20	Form Models II: Open-endedness and Prophecy
21	Form Models III and IV: Rationality and Memory
22	Cases I: Public and Private Domains
23	Cases II: Suburbs and Periphery
24	Cases III: Post-urbanism and Resource Conservation
25	Cases IV: Hyper and Mega-urbanism
26	Conclusion: Towards a Theory of City Form