How to Build a City

Catalog description

This course will study how to transform cities at a large, comprehensive scale and provide students with an introduction to the integrated set of tools necessary to “build a city” through the evaluation and design of large-scale urban revitalization efforts. Taught by a practitioner who led the London Olympic Legacy Corporation, was Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development in Philadelphia and was the former planning director for Washington DC, the course will take a “hands-on” approach by combining case studies of major urban initiatives, field trips in Philadelphia to observe first hand how urban revitalization efforts have succeeded and been limited, and workshops where student teams will learn to design their own large-scale “city building” urban revitalization initiative. The goal of the course is for students to understand the forces that affect how cities and neighborhoods grow and change (economic, political, social, governance) and to be introduced to the comprehensive set of skills and perspectives essential to “building a city” such as infrastructure planning and finance; the organization of city planning and regulatory programs; urban and neighborhood governance and participation/ownership models; forms of public/private partnerships and tax incentive policies, among other topics. The course will examine major urban revitalization initiatives in recent 21st century history in North America and Europe to understand their effectiveness, such as: urban renewal; urban empowerment, enterprise and opportunity zones; Hope VI and the redevelopment of public housing; the London 2012 Olympics and mega sports events; urban waterfronts, such as the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative in Washington DC and the Delaware River waterfront in Philadelphia; the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative and recent Soda Tax in Philadelphia; the “smart city” proposed by…