11.329 | Fall 2005 | Graduate

Social Theory and the City

Readings

During each class session, students presented their draft works-in-progress, which constituted the only required reading for the course. As most of these works remain in draft stages, they are not published below. Instead a selection of the works referenced for each class is provided as recommended reading on the topics covered in the papers.

SES # TOPICS READINGS

1 - 3

Ses #1:
Introduction

Ses #2:
Center vs. Periphery

Ses #3
Up/Down vs. Above/Below

Polanyi, Michael. The Tacit Dimension. New York, NY: Peter Smith Publishing, 1983. ISBN: 0844659991.

Weber, Max. “The Nature of the City.” In Perspectives on Urban Society. Edited by Efren N. Padilla. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2006. ISBN: 0205374530.

Simmel, Georg. “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” Chapter 1 in The Blackwell City Reader. Edited by Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002. ISBN: 0631225145.

Simmel, George, Kurt Wolff, and Reinhard Bendix. Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliations. New York, NY: Free Press, 1964. ISBN: 0029288401.

Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1999. ISBN: 067404326X.

Lefebvre, Henri. The Urban Revolution. Translated by Robert Bononno. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 2003. ISBN: 0816641609.

Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York, NY: Zone Books, 1994. ISBN: 0942299809.

Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Rendall. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988. ISBN: 0520061683.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1995. ISBN: 0679752552.

Buy at MIT Press Habermas, Juergen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Translated by Thomas Burger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991. ISBN: 0262581086.

Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998. ISBN: 0226025985.

———. On Revolution. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1990. ISBN: 014018421X.

Bourdieu, Pierre, et al. The Weight of the World: Human Suffering in Contemporary Society. Translated by Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, et al. Oxford, UK: Polity Press, 1999. ISBN: 0745615937.

Maturana, Humberto, and Francisco Varela. The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding. Translated by Robert Paolucci. New York, NY: Random House, 1992. ISBN: 0877736421.

4

The Homo-Faber Project - R. Sennett

Anon. “Homeric Hymn to Hephaestus” In Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica. Translated by H. G. Evelyn-White. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Loeb Classical Library, 1914 and Portland, OR: Blue Unicorn Press. ISBN: 1583965769.

Buy at MIT Press McEwen, Indra Kagis. Socrates’ Ancestor. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997. ISBN: 0262631482.

Bruggen, Coosje Van. Frank O. Gehry: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Appendix II, statement by Frank Gehry. “Gehry on Titanium.” New York, NY: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1997. ISBN: 0892071923.

Flyvbjerg, Bent, et al. Megaprojects and Risk. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Hall, Peter. Great Planning Disasters. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1980.

Hart, V., and P. Hicks. Paper Palaces. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.

Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1995.

———. “Seeing Through Computers.” American Prospect 31 (1997): 81.

Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. London, UK: Methuen, 1961.

Marx, Karl. The Grundrisse. Translated by Martin Nicolaus. New York, NY: Vintage, 1973.

———. “Critique of the Gotha Program.” In Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Works. London, UK: Lawrence and Wishart, 1950.

Tilgher, Adriano. Work: What it has Meant to Men through the Ages. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1930.

Veblen, Thorstein. “The Theory of the Leisure Class.” In The Portable Veblen. Edited by Max Lerner. New York, NY: Viking, 1948 (1899).

Mills, C. Wright. White Collar. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1951.

Blackwell, Trevor, and Jeremy Seabrook. “Len Greenham.” In Talking Work. London, UK: Faber and Faber, 1996.

Ruskin, John. The Stones of Venice. New York, NY: DeCapo Press, 1985.

Buy at MIT Press Sudnow, David. Ways of the Hand. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. ISBN: 0262194678.

Lieberman, Julie Lyonn. “The Slide.” The Strad 116, no. 1383 (July 2005): 69.

Symons, Michael. A History of Cooks and Cooking. London, UK: Prospect, 2001.

Knechtges, David. “A literary feast: food in early Chinese literature.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 106, no. 1 (1986): 49-63.

O’Connor, Erin. “Embodied Knowledge: The Experience of Meaning and the Struggle Towards Proficiency in Glassblowing.” In Ethnography 6, no. 2 (2005): 183-204.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Phenomenology of Perception. New York, NY: Humanities Press, 1962.

Polanyi, Michael. Personal Knowledge. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Markham, Beryl. West through the Night. New York, NY: North Point Press, 2002.

5

Stealth Gentrification - Lara Belkind

 

6

Spaces of Knowledge within the New York City Subway - Elliott Felix

NYC

MTA Bond Act

Joseph Brennan Abandoned Subway Stations

Boston Public Library

Open Source Initiatives

Cudahy, Brian. The New York Subway, Its Construction, and Equipment. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 1991.

Diehl, Lorraine. Subways: The Tracks That Built New York. New York, NY: Clarkson Potter, 2004.

Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. Edited and Translated by James Stachey. Vol. XVII. London, UK: Hogarth, 1953.

———. Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Edited and translated by James Stachey. New York, NY: Norton, 1989.

Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York, NY: Random House, 1961.

Kristeva, Julia. The Portable Kristeva. Edited by Kelly Oliver. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2002.

Kurzweil, Ray. The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. New York, NY: Viking, 1999.

Meyer, Julie. “The Stranger in the City.” American Journal of Sociology 56, no. 5 (March 1951).

Simmel, Georg. “The Metropolis and Urban Life.” Reprinted in Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities. Edited by Richard Sennett. New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969.

———. “The Stranger.” Translated in The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Edited by Kurt Wolff. New York, NY: Free Press, 1950.

Buy at MIT Press Wodiczko, Kyrzstof. Critical Vehicles: Writings, Projects, and Interviews. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. ISBN: 0262731223.

Woolston, Howard. “The Urban Habit of Mind.” American Journal of Sociology 17, no. 5 (March 1912).

Buy at MIT Press Williams, Rosalind H. Notes on the Underground: an Essay on Technology, Society, and the Imagination. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992. ISBN: 0262730987.

7

Theorizing a Center for Universal Design - Nadya Nilina

Southpoint: From Ruin to Rejuvenation

8

The Racial Politics of Urban Celebrations - Annis Whitlow

Whitlow, Annis. The Racial Politics of Urban Celebrations: A Comparative Study of Philadelphia’s Mummers Parade and Odunde Festival. Master’s Thesis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004. (PDF - 1.6 MB)

9

Structuring Beyond Architecture - David Foxe

Abel, Chris. Architecture, Technology, and Process. Oxford, UK: Elsevier, 2004.

Allen, Edward, and Waclaw Zalewski. Shaping Structures. New York, NY: Wiley and Sons, 1998.

Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998. ISBN: 0226025985.

Augustine of Hippo, Saint. De Civitate Dei. Washington, DC: Catholic Education Press, 1949.

Berman, Marshall. All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1982.

Brand, Stewart. How Buildings Learn. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1994.

Bukofzer, Manfred. Music in the Baroque Era. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1947.

Carl, Peter. “Architecture Imagines a Better Future.” In Scroope 16. Edited by Davidovici Foxe, et al. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Department of Architecture, 2004.

Cox, Harvey. The Secular City. New York, NY: Macmillan, 1961.

Dow, Alden B. Reflections. Midland, MI: Northwood University Press, 1970.

Giedion, Siegfried. Space, Time, and Architecture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941.

Goethe, Johann. Faust. New York, NY: Woodstock Books, 1993.

Hughes, Thomas P. Human-Built World / How to think about technology and culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Kelly, Barbara Mae. Expanding the American Dream / Building and Rebuilding Levittown. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993.

Krieg, Joann, ed. Long Island Studies: Robert Moses, Single-Minded Genius. Papers presented at Long Island Studies Conference, Robert Moses and the Planned Environment, June 10-11, 1988. Interlaken, NY: Heart of the Lakes Publishing, 1989.

Loyd, Clinton F. The Belt Parkway: Published on the Occasion of the Opening. New York, NY: Robley Press Service, 1940.

Sennett, Richard. The Fall of Public Man. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1974.

———. Conscience of the Eye. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1992.

Buy at MIT Press Shepheard, Paul. Artificial Love / A Story of Machines and Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. ISBN: 0262194856.

Solomon, Jonathan. 13 Projects for the Sheridan Expressway a.k.a. Jump, Slump, Hump, Bump - Guide Specifications for a Post-Fordist Infrastructure. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004. (Pamphlet Architecture 26).

10

The Architecture of Repression - Olga Touloumi

New Transatlantic Agenda, European Union - Delegation of the European Commission to the United States. December 1995.

Solana, Javier. “Thessaloniki: closer to Europe.” In Council of the European Union. (PDF)

“The WTO in brief.” In WTO Web site, The Multilateral Trading System-Past, Present and Future, The Organization.

Kaminski, Bartolomiej, and Manuel de la Rocha. “Stabilization and association process in the Balkans: integration options and their assessment.” World Bank Web site. (PDF - 6.0 MB)

Bentham, Jeremy. “Panopticon, or the Inspection House: Containing the Idea of a New Principle of Construction Applicable to Any Sort of Establishment, in which Persons of Any Description are to be Kept under Inspection; and in the Particular to Penitentiary Houses, Prisons, Poor Houses, Lazarettos, Houses or Industry, Manufactories, Hospitals, Work-Houses, Mad-Houses, and Schools: With a Plan of Management Adapted to the Principle.” In The Works of Jeremy Bentham (1787). Vol. IV. Edited by John Bowring. New York, NY: Russell and Russell, 1962.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Nomadology: The War Machine. Translated by Brian Massumi. New York, NY: Semiotext(e), 1986.

———. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.

11

Inventing the Modern Suburb in California and Denmark - Thomas Oles

All translations from the Danish by Brian Thomas Oles.

Høyer, Steen. Danmark & landskabets tid (Denmark & landscape time). Copenhagen, Denmark: Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole, 1999.

Lind, Olaf. Bag hækken: det danske parcelhus i lyst og nød (Behind the hedge: the Danish single family house in good and bad). Copenhagen, Denmark: Arkitektens Forlag, 1996.

Jespersen, Niels. A History of Denmark. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave McMillan, 2004.

Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Stephanie Barron, ed. Made in California: art, image, and identity, 1900-2000. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000.

Hartmann, Sys, and Villads Villadsen. Danmarks arkitektur: byens huse, byens plan (The Architecture of Denmark: The City’s Buildings, The City’s Plan). Copenhagen, Denmark: Gyldendal, 1979.

Thau, Carsten. “Klaustrofobi og kedsomhed” (Claustrophobia and boredom). Interview by Marc-Christof Wagner. Information 8 (June 2004): 10.

Gaardmand, Arne. Dansk byplanlægning 1938-1992 (Danish city planning 1938-1992). Copenhagen, Denmark: Arkitektens Forlag, 1993.

Bjørn, Claus. Det danske landbrugs historie (The history of Danish agriculture). Vol. III. Odense, Denmark: Landbohistorisk selskab, 1988.

Fritzbøger, Bo. Detåbne lands kulturhistorie (The cultural history of rural land). Frederiksberg, Denmark: DSR Forlag, 1998.

Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumers’ Republic. New York, NY: Vintage, 2003.

Manniche, Peter. Living Democracy in Denmark. Toronto, Canada: Ryerson Press, 1952.

Hayden, Dolores. Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000. New York, NY: Vintage, 2003.

Soja, Edward. Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2000.

Toft, Anders Høyer. “Huset uden egenskaber, en undersøgelse af arkitekturen med parcelhuset som spejl.” The house without qualities: an investigation of architecture with the single family house as mirror (September 2001): 8.

Steen-Andersen, Ove. Bo Bedre’s nye typehusbog: valg, planer, kritik, priser (Bo Bedre’s new typehouse book: choice, plans, criticism, prices). Copenhagen, Denmark: Fogtdals Bogforlag A/S, 1969, passim.

Buy at MIT Press Walker, Peter, and Melanie Simo. Invisible Gardens: The Search for Modernism in the American Landscape. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994. ISBN: 0262731169.

Møller, Jørgen Nue. “Bag hækken.” (Behind the hedge), Arkitekten 98, no. 27 (1996): 31.

Starr, Kevin. “Sunset Magazine and the Phenomenon of the Far West.” In Sunset Magazine: A Century of Western Living, 1898-1998. Historical Portraits and a Chronological Bibliography of Selected Topics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Libraries, 1998.

Buy at MIT Press Hines, Thomas S. “Case Study Trouvé: Sources and Precedents, Southern California, 1920-1942.” In Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses. Edited by Elizabeth A. T. Smith. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. ISBN: 0262692139.

Tiedemann, Anker. “Bo Bedre 40 år.” (40 years of Bo Bedre), 2001.

Jensen, Niels. Allotment Guide: Copenhagen and Surroundings. Copenhagen, Denmark: De Frie Fugle, 1996.

Utypiske haver til et typehus: 39 haveplaner (Untypical gardens for a typehouse: 39 garden plans). 3rd ed. Copenhagen, Denmark: Christian Ejlers’ Forlag, 1997, passim. ISBN: 8772418249.

Wilhjelm, Preben. Dansk boligpolitik: forbrydelse eller dumned? (Danish housing politics: crime or folly?). Copenhagen, Denmark: Forlaget Røde Hane, 1971, pp. 58.

McCamant, Kathryn, and Charles Durrett. Co-housing: a contemporary approach to housing ourselves. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1994.

Enggaard, Michael, and Flemming Rose. “Hvad vil det sige at være dansk?” (What does it mean to be Danish?) Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, December 9, 2004.

Eichler Network

Live Modern

Clark, T. C. Farewell to an Idea. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.

Buy at MIT Press Tafuri, Manfredo. Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development. Translated by Barbara Luigia La Penta. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976. ISBN: 0262700204.

12

Proyecto Cities - Stephen Ramos

The Limit of Place - Nomita Sawhney

The Limit of Place

Sennett, Richard. Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 1994.

Calvino, Italo. “Cities and Desire.” In Invisible Cities. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1978.

Yates, Frances. “Architecture and the Art of Memory.” In Architectural design 38, no. 12 (December 1968): 573-578.

Buy at MIT Press Boyer, M. Christine. The City of Collective Memory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1996. ISBN: 0262023717.

13

Photographs in Urban Planning - Steven Moga

Immigrant Spaces in the European City - Jennifer Mack

Photographs in Urban Planning

Adams, Robert. Los Angeles Spring. New York, NY: Aperture, 1986.

Aperture. Weegee. New York, NY: Aperture Inc., 1978.

———. Robert Frank. New York, NY: Aperture Inc., 1976.

Baughman, James. Henry Luce and the Rise of the American News Media. Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1987.

Covey, David, et al. Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in Southern California. San Diego, CA: Oasis Press, 1979.

Danese, Renato, ed. American Images: New Work by Twenty Contemporary Photographers. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1979.

Davis, Mike. Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, 1998.

Dear, Michael, H. Eric Shockman, and Greg Hise, eds. Rethinking Los Angeles. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 1996.

Desmarais, Charles. Proof: Los Angeles Art and the Photograph, 1960-1980.

Edson, Charles Farwell. Los Angeles: From the Sierras to the Sea. Los Angeles, CA: W.T. Potter, 1916.

Feininger, Andreas. Andreas Feininger, Photographer. New York, NY: Harry Abrams, Inc., 1986.

Frank, Robert. The Americans. New York, NY: Grove Press, 1958.

———. Robert Frank. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1985.

Frye, L. Thomas, and Therese Heyman. Photographs of Peter Stackpole: Peacetime, Wartime, and Hollywood. Oakland, CA: The Oakland Museum, 1992.

Hales, Peter B. Silver Cities: The Photography of American Urbanization, 1839-1915. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1984.

Heimann, Jim. Hooray for Hollywood: A Postcard Tour of Hollywood’s Golden Era. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1983.

Henstell, Bruce. Los Angeles: An Illustrated History. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980.

———. Sunshine and Wealth: Los Angeles in the Twenties and Thirties. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1984.

Heyman, Therese. Slices of Time: California Landscapes 1860-1880 and 1960-1980. Oakland, CA: The Oakland Museum, 1981.

Jones, Helen L., and Robert F. Wilcox. Metropolitan Los Angeles: Its Governments. Los Angeles, CA: The Haynes Foundation, 1949.

Joyce, Paul. Hockney on Photography. New York, NY: Harmony Books, 1988.

Katzman, Louise. Photography in California, 1945-1980. New York, NY: Hudson Hills Press, 1984.

Levin, Jeffrey, ed. Picture LA: Landmarks of a New Generation. Los Angeles, CA: The J. Paul Getty Trust, 1994.

Buy at MIT Press Longstreth, Richard. City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920-1950. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997. ISBN: 0262621258.

Lyons, Nathan, ed. Photographers on Photography. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966.

McSavaney, Ray. Explorations: A Photographic Journey. Los Angeles, CA: Findlay and Sampson Editions, 1992.

Maddow, Ben, and Max Yavno. The Photography of Max Yavno. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981.

Misrach, Richard. Desert Cantos. Albuquerque, NM: The University of New Mexico Press, 1987.

Neubauer, Hendrik. Black Star: 60 Years of Photojournalism. Cologne, Germany: Koenemann Verlagsgesellschaft, 1997.

The Photography Museum. Southern California Photography 1900-1965: An Historical Survey. Los Angeles, CA: The Photography Museum,1980.

Robinson, W. W. Panorama: A Picture History of Southern California. Los Angeles, CA: Title Insurance and Trust Company, 1953.

Ruscha, Edward. Every Building on the Sunset Strip. Los Angeles, CA: self-published, 1966.

———. Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles. Los Angeles, CA: self-published, 1967.

Schuneman, R. Smith, ed. Photographic Communication: Principles, Problems, and Challenges of Photojournalism. London, UK: Focal Press, 1972.

Scott, Mel. Metropolitan Los Angeles: One Community. Los Angeles, CA: The Haynes Foundation, 1949.

Shippey, Lee, and Max Yavno. The Los Angeles Book. Cambridge, MA: The River Press, 1950.

Shore, Stephen. Uncommon Places: Photographs by Stephen Shore. New York, NY: Aperture, 1982.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1977.

Thomas, William E. Images of Our Times: Sixty Years of Photography from the Los Angeles Times. New York, NY: Harry A. Abrams, Inc., 1987.

Tucker, Anne Wilkes, ed. Robert Frank: New York to Nova Scotia. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1986.

Vergara, Camilo Jose. The New American Ghetto. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995.

Wainwright, Loudon. The Great American Magazine: An Inside History of LIFE. New York, NY: Alfred Knopf, 1986.

Waldie, D. J. Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1996.

Weaver, John D. El Pueblo Grande: Los Angeles from the Brush Huts of Yanga to the Skyscrapers of the Modern Megalopolis. Los Angeles, CA: Anderson, Ritchie, and Simon, 1973.

Immigrant Spaces

Mack, Jennifer. Ice Skating and Island Hopping: Refugees, Integration, and Access in a Segregated City. Rose Marie Rodgers Working Paper 20. Cambridge, MA: Inter-University Committee on International Migration, 2003. (PDF - 1.1 MB)

Yan, Yunxiang. “McDonald’s in Beijing: The Localization of Americana.” In Golden Arches East. Edited by James L. Watson. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. ISBN: 0804732058.

Sennett, Richard. The Conscience of the Eye: Design and Social Life of Cities. New York, NY: Norton, 1990.

Course Info

As Taught In
Fall 2005
Level
Learning Resource Types
Lecture Notes
Written Assignments with Examples