CRP 5190 - History and Theory of Urban Spatial Development

Spring. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

Staff.

This course explores the rich legacy of urban physical planning and design, examining both the reification of human values in the built environment and the shaping of society and culture by the places we have envisioned, planned and built. A spectrum of forces and agents—economic, political, religious, technological—will be analyzed to understand their impact on the spatial form of cities and regions. Themes include the origins of urban settlements; humanism, utopianism and the quest for the “ideal city”; the dialectics of modernity and tradition; power and the grassroots; the role of transportation technology; the spatial dynamics of race and class; and the urban crisis, “white flight” and suburbanization. The course concludes with an analysis of contemporary urbanism and an assessment of the renewal of city life in an age of unprecedented global urbanization, peak oil and light speed flows of ideas and information.