Masters of Urban Design

Fall Term

Theories of Urban Design (URP519)

“Each generation writes its own biography in the cities it creates,”
Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities

The purpose of this seminar is to critically evaluate the concepts and practices of urban design. In the spirit of Lewis Mumford's quote, we will be exploring the biographies that past generations have written with the design of their cities and we will be discussing what biographies we hope this generation, faced with many new challenges, will create. Key to interpreting our urban ‘biographies’ is understanding how different design philosophies shape form, configuration, and the distribution of uses. Our readings are organized around nine themes:

  • Signature moments and movements in the history of urban design and city-making
  • Criticisms of modern planning and design
  • Theoretical concepts of place
  • Place-making practices
  • Typology and Morphology in Urban Design
  • Physical form- implications and externalities
  • Physical elements of urban design
  • Urban Design Practice
  • The Future is Now

Required Texts:

Jacobs, Jane. 1993. The death and life of great American cities. New York: The Modern Library.

Larice, Michael, and Elizabeth Macdonald, eds. 2007. The urban design reader. The Routledge Urban Reader Series., eds. Richard T. LeGates, Frederic Stout. New York: Routledge.

Lynch, Kevin. 1960. The image of the city. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Wolfe, Tom. From Bauhaus to Our House. New York: Bantam Books.

Additional Readings (C-tools):

Cranz, Galen, and Michael Boland. 2004. Defining the sustainable park: A fifth model for urban parks. Landscape Journal 23: 102-120.

Davis, Mike. 2001. Magical urbanism. Revised ed. New York: Verso.

Fainstein, Susan. 2000. New directions in planning theory. Urban Affairs Review 35, (March): 451-478.

Kunstler, James Howard. 2003. The city in mind: Notes on the urban condition. New York: The Free Press.

Larsen, Larissa, and David Alameddin. 2007. The Evolution of Early Phoenix: Valley business elite, land speculation, and the emergence of planning. The Journal of Planning History 6: 87-112.

Larsen, Larissa, and Lily Swanbrow. 2006. Postcards of Phoenix: Images of desert ambivalence and homogeneity. Landscape Journal 25:: 206-217.

Monaghan, Peter. 2001. Lost in place: Yi-fu Tuan may be the most influential scholar you've never heard of, The Chronicle of Higher Education. May 16.

Parker, Simon. 2004. Urban theory and the urban experience. New York: Routledge.

Peponis, John, and Jean Wineman. 2001. Spatial structure of environment and behavior. In Handbook of Environmental Psychology, eds. R. Bechtel, A. Churchman, 271-291. New York: John Wiley.

Sandercock, Leonie. 2003. Cosmopolis II: Mongrel cities in the 21st century. London, England: Continuum.

Soja, Edward W. 2000. Postmetropolis: Critical studies of cities and regions. Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishers.

Sorkin, Michael. 2007. The end(s) of urban design. Harvard Design Magazine Winter: 5-18.

Talen, Emily. 2006. Design that enables diversity: The complications of a planning ideal. Journal of Planning Literature 20, (3): 233-249.

Ward, Stephen V. 1998. Selling places: The marketing and promotion of towns and cities 1850-2000 ( 1-7).