Urban Form and the Design of Cities

Catalog description

This is a 3-credit hour lecture course that explores the rich legacy of urban design and the evolution of city form in global space and time. It will examine the manifestation of human values and ideals in the built environment, and the consequent shaping or society and culture by the places we have envisioned, planned, built and peopled. A broad spectrum of operative forces and agents - economic, cultural, political, relgious, technological - will be analyzed to understand their unantipated effects on cities, suburbs and metropolitan regions. Themese inclue the origins of urban form; utopianism and the ideal city; the dynamics of power and the grassroots, the challenge of modernity; transportation technology and settlement patterns; and the dynamics of space, race and class.