Constructing the Appropriate City: Competing Urban Visions

Course Description
This course introduces students to the field of urban studies and planning. In it, we explore how markedly different urban visions and planning and design concepts arise in response to the impacts of political economic and social change on cities. Utilizing a developing body of critical urban theory, we explore how transformations of urban life, and growing racial, economic, and gender inequities are mapped onto city landscapes, prompting struggles over public space as well as a variety of approaches to planning designed to address mounting issues. In a historical context, we examine such topics as the origins of urban planning and social reform, the radical genesis and then demise of public housing, and strategies that promote urban renewal, "garden cities," suburbanization, and a post-war reshaping of the urban landscape triggered in part by growing racial divisions, immigration, and massive de-industrialization. In the present day, we focus on the assumptions behind, and consequences of, such design initiatives as the New Urbanism, downtown-focused cultural and commercial tourism, and the privatization of, and resulting struggles over, urban public space. Within this framework, we examine the recent efforts of many post-industrial cities to base urban regeneration schemes around a growing creative economy involving the arts, culture, media and design. We also explore continuing processes of uneven development and gentrification within cities, while directing attention as well to some of the more innovative and participatory approaches to grassroots neighborhood organizing.