Planning Public Space (SNF Paideia Program Course)

Catalog description

Philadelphia's commitment to mending the damage wrought by 20th Century highway development has helped drive the planning and development of signature public spaces across the city from the park capping I-95 currently in construction to the Rail Park atop the Reading Viaduct. This work has required navigating complex political and bureaucratic terrain. Using the Rail Park, and its extensions as a lens, the course will help students explore the tensions endemic to urban change. Students will learn from local project managers, advocates, and thought leaders, about how advocates engaged funders, institutions, and bureaucracies to transform Philadelphia's waterfronts, and old industrial core. Participants in the course will work in partnership with the Friends of the Rail Park to develop a framework that fosters community and stakeholder dialogue in the long term development of "the Cut" (the subterranean extensions of the Rail Park, in Philadelphia's loft district, and adjacent to the Community College of Philadelphia and major institutions along the Parkway).