The Dynamic Metropolis - Teaching Assistant
UNIVERSITY LECTURE 2620A
The Dynamic Metropolis
Instructor: Joseph Heathcott <heathcoj@newschool.edu>
TAs:
Olimpia Mosteanu <mosto995@newschool.edu>
Marisa Solomon <solom270@newschool.edu>
Mine Yildrin <yildm128@newschool.edu>
Lecture: Tue, 4:00 - 5:15pm, in 66 W. 12th St., Rm 404
Sections: A) Tue, 6:00 - 7:15pm
B) Wed, 12:00 - 1:15pm
C) Thu, 4:00 - 5:15pm
D) Thu, 6:00 - 7:15pm
We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it. --Baudelaire
Overview
The city, wrote the theologian John Coleman Adams, "is a surprise to its own inhabitants. It grows beyond all prophecy; it develops in unexpected directions; it increases in territory and population at a pace which is scarcely less than appalling." Though he penned those words in 1896, they are as true today as ever. This course introduces students to the "appalling" growth and "marvelous" dynamism of cities, suburbs, and metropolitan regions. Students examine the development and expansion of the metropolis in the 19th and 20th centuries. While the focus in on the United States, examples will be drawn from a range of urban agglomerations, including Mexico City, Tokyo, London, Hong Kong, Nairobi, Paris, and Mumbai. The course surveys several key themes germane to understanding metropolitan regions: the nature of urban life and experience; overlapping systems of governance, policy, and economy; population, immigration, and the shifting spatial distributions of race, ethnicity, and class; the emergence of major institutions such as schools, libraries, and hospitals; technological networks of transit, utilities, and communications; and the changing morphology, composition, and design of the built environment.
Objectives
The main goal of the course is to introduce conceptual rigor and complexity to the examination of the metropolis. The course provides a strong foundation for your future engagements with cities, whether in the everyday capacity as citizens, or as scholars, artists, designers, novelists, architects, bloggers, activists, advocates, musicians, journalists, curators, librarians, filmmakers, or agitators of one kind or another. After completing this course, you will be able to do the following:
• Provide a general outline of the recent history of cities and suburbs, and place phases of urban development in their proper contexts.
• Distinguish among varied urban concepts and practices as these emerge from different disciplines, interests, ideologies, and traditions.
• Analyze cities as generators of economic and social vitality as well as landscapes transformed by human planning and design.
• Identify and characterize a range of social groups, political interests, technologies, and cultural practices that shape the metropolis over time.
• Describe the metropolis at a variety of scales--from street level exchanges to designed landscapes to regional ecologies.
Elements
We have shaped this course to provide a robust introduction to the study of cities, suburbs, and metropolitan regions. The experience of the course will revolve around the following elements:
Lecture. Lectures are designed to provide crucial background for the readings, assignments, and discussions. Occasionally lectures will touch on material covered by texts, but more often they will provide the broad framework for understanding course materials. Attendance at lectures is critical to your success in the course, since material from the lectures will invariably show up on exams.
Discussion. Every week, students will engage one another in the intensive discussion of course materials. Discussion is the principal forum for synthesizing the course readings, visuals, and other documents. This is where you really make sense of the course, and raise critical issues and concerns about the study of cities.
Materials. We have carefully selected a wide range of materials in each course section, from scholarly texts and agency reports to photographs, maps, films, video, poems, and works of fiction. Most of the material is short in length and can easily be completed within the allotted time.
Assignments. Over the semester, students will complete one short paper, one team project, a midterm exam, and a final exam. In order to maximize the quality of the work, the exams are administered as 'open-book' / 'take-home' format.
Policies
Attendance: Students will receive a demotion of one-half of a letter grade for each unexcused absence. The only legitimate excuses for absence are: an extended illness requiring hospitalization or visit to a physician; a family emergency, e.g. serious illness; observance of a religious holiday. More than four unexcused absences will result in a failing grade for the course.
Academic Honesty: Students should read and follow the University Code of Conduct concerning academic honesty: www.newschool.edu/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=81698. Plagiarism is the unacknowledged use of someone else's work as one's own in all forms of academic endeavor (such as essays, theses, examinations, research data, creative projects, etc), intentional or unintentional. Plagiarized material may be derived from a variety of sources, such as books, journals, internet postings, student or faculty papers. This includes the purchase or "outsourcing" of written assignments for a course.
Disabilities: In keeping with the University's policy of providing equal access for students with disabilities, any student requesting accommodations must first meet with Student Disability Services. Student Disability Services is located at 79 Fifth Avenue - 5th Floor. The phone number is 212.229.5626. The URL is: www.newschool.edu/studentaffairs/disability/. The office is available to answer any questions or concerns.
Evaluation: We assume that students at The New School are capable of excellent work; however, we will grade each of you on performance rather than potential. Grades will be assigned along a standard academic scale:
A (90 - 100%). The relatively rare grades of A and A- are reserved for work of the highest caliber. It reflects the capacity of the student to render work of depth, focus, insight, and originality.
B (80 - 89%). Signifies that the student has performed well on a given assignment or in the course, submitting above average work and contributing on a weekly basis.
C (70 - 79%). Indicates that the student has fulfilled requirements to an acceptable level. Receiving a C on an assignment suggests that it is good, but not exceptional. As a course grade, it might indicate continuity of average work, or performance that is good in some areas and poor in others.
D (60 - 69%). Marks performance that falls below acceptable levels. For an assignment, this suggests that the student has not met the minimum expectations. For the course, the D results from overall poor performance, whether on assignments, participation, or attendance.
F (0 - 59%). Indicates failure to meet the minimum expectations of an assignment or the course. Most often, students receive an F for failing to turn in all assignments or for excessive absences, rather than for the quality of work alone.
Late Work: Late work in this course will be penalized by the reduction of an assignment grade by one-half letter grade per day. Exceptions to this policy are very rare, and can be made only in dire emergencies (see attendance policy above).
Assignments
In ULEC 2620, assignments are designed chiefly to elicit informed, synthetic, and conceptually sophisticated understandings of the material presented. Grades are based on a 500-point total. Due dates for the assignments are clearly indicated on the syllabus.
Readings: The following required texts are available at Shakespeare & Co:
• Richard LeGates and Frederic Stout, The City Reader, 5th Edition (TCR)
• Susan Fainstein and Scott Campbell, Readings in Urban Theory, 3rd Edition (RUT)
All readings not found in these books are marked with a ® and are available electronically through Blackboard. Videos are also available following the links on Blackboard.
Participation: I take your participation in the life of the course very seriously. Our success depends on everyone's active involvement, so it is vitally important that you speak up in the classroom. Participation includes not simply attending lecture and discussion, but coming prepared to contribute and to engage your colleagues in a spirit of civility and common purpose. (100 POINTS, 20% of total grade)
Group Presentation: The Multilayered Metropolis. In this assignment, you will work in teams to examine a well-defined small place--e.g., a street intersection, a commercial corridor, a rail hub, a park or playground. The goal will be to tease out relationships between the physical and social conditions of everyday urban life. You will describe the observable layers of changes over time, current social conditions and uses of the space, and the iterative relationship between the social and physical. Each group will present their findings (including images, maps, stats and texts) in a ten-page power point document. (100 POINTS, 20% of total grade)
Paper: The Creative City. Working in teams, you will assume the role of consultants who have been invited to report on a creative response to a specific urban issue. The reports should analyze the location, the urban issue, and the creative approach taken. The approaches that you study may vary--from municipal policy to regional planning, public art, architectural design, grass roots organizing, musical innovation, or a combination. In all cases, the goal is to expand our understanding of the tremendous range of creative engagements that are possible within and between cities. (100 POINTS, 20% of total grade)
Mid Term Exam: The mid-term exam consists of short-answer identification and essays. The short ID's are worth 20 points and the essays 80 points. The exam tests your ability to apply knowledge gained in the course. Simply marshalling facts is not enough. You will be asked to explain, contextualize, and interpret complex material, integrating insights from all of the readings and lectures and discussions into your essays. (100 POINTS, 20% of total grade)
Final Exam: The final exam has the same format as the midterm. The final is comprehensive, in that material will come from the entire semester, although it will be heavily weighted toward the second half of the course. Regardless of how well you have done on other assignments, you must take the final exam to pass the course. (100 POINTS, 20% of total grade)
Weekly Schedule
Part One: Introduction
Week One, 08.26: The study of the metropolis
Frederic Legates, "How to Study Cities," TCR
Larry Ford, "Merging Traditions of Space and Place," Cities + Buildings ®
Arthur Symons, Chs. I - III, London: A Book of Aspects ®
Part Two: Concepts
Week Two, 09.02: The Layered City
Margaret Crawford, "Blurring the Boundaries," RUT
Iain Borden, "Urban Compositions," Skateboarding, Space, and the City ®
Walt Whitman, "The City Dead-House" ®
Video: How Buildings Learn, Part 6--Shearing Layers <http://youtu.be/HTSbtM12IZw>
Week Three, 09.09: The Imagined City
Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Man with the Twisted Lip," Sherlock Holmes ®
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Part 1, Learning from Las Vegas ®
Sharon Zukin, "Changing Landscapes of Power," RUT
General Motors Promotional Film, "To New Horizons"
Week Four, 09.16: The Social City
Louis Wirth, "Urbanism as a Way of Life," TCR
Jane Jacobs, "The Use of Sidewalks: Safety," TCR
Robert D. Putnam, "Bowling Alone," TCR
Viral internet meme: "Shit People Say in": Mumbai, NYC, London, L.A., Toronto, Chicago
Screen in lecture: And This Is Free: Life and Times of Chicago's Legendary Maxwell St.
Week Five, 09.23: The Networked Metropolis
Saskia Sassen, "The Impact of New Technologies and Globalization," TCR
Jonathan Beaverstock et al, "World-City Networks," TCR
AbdouMaliq Simone, "People as Infrastructure," in Public Culture ®
Vocational film, "Telephone and Telegraph"
Heinz promotional film, "The Big Delivery Wagon"
First group project due in lecture
Part Three: Trajectories
Week Six, 09.30: The Industrial Furnace
Frederick Engles, "The Great Towns," TCR
Carl Sandburg, "Chicago," ®
Maya Marx, "A Shanghai Slaughterhouse Reborn," in Interventions/Adaptive Reuse ®
Web site: The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit <www.detroityes.com/home.htm>
Web site: Emscher Park < http://citypeak.blogspot.com/2011/10/emscher-park-ruhr-valley-germany.html>
Week Seven, 10.07: An Urban Age?
Ernest Burgess, "The Growth of the City," TCR
Frederick Law Olmsted, "Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns," TCR
William Shack, "Le Jazz Hot," in Harlem in Montmartre ®
Clips of Josephine Baker in Paris <http://youtu.be/6BhNv7dRHQI>
Clips from Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov) <http://youtu.be/Uh78-IcKNdQ>
Clips from Modern Times (Chaplin), view in discussion sections
Week Eight, 10.14: The Expanding Metropolis
Frank Lloyd Wright, "Broadacre City," TCR
Kenneth T. Jackson, "Drive-In Culture," TCR
General Motors promo film, To New Horizons <archive.org/details/ToNewHor1940>
Redbook magazine promo film, In the Suburbs <www.archive.org/details/IntheSub1957>
CNN Report, Mexico's Urban Sprawl <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IN0BG39BEA>
Midterm Exam posted on Blackboard after lecture
Week Nine, 10.21: Cities in a Globalizing world
Joe Painter, "Regulation Theory, Post-Fordism, and Urban Politics," RUT
Donald McNeill, "The Bilbao Effect," RUT
Tingwei Zhang, "Chinese Cities in a Global Society," TCR
Music videos from MIA, Spoek Mathambo, etc
Midterm Exam Due in lecture
Part Four: Themes
Week Ten, 10.28: Diversity
Susan Fainstein, "Cities and Diversity," RUT
Peter Marcuse, "Cities in Quarters," RUT
Susan Okin, "Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women," RUT
Bhikhu Parekh, "Response to Susan Okin: A Varied Moral World," Boston Review ®
NYC demographic data <www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/neigh_info/nhmap.shtml>
Week Eleven, 11.04: Inequality
W.E.B. DuBois, "The Negro Problems of Philadelphia," in TCR
W.J. Wilson, "From Institutional to Jobless Ghettos," TCR
Ali Madanipour, "Social Exclusion and Space," TCR
Million Dollar Blocks project <www.spatialinformationdesignlab.org/projects.php?id=16>
BBC Documentary, Welcome to the slums of India
Week Twelve, 11.11: Governance
Mike Royko, ch. 1, in Boss ®
David Harvey, "Contested Cities," TCR
Myron Orfield, "Metropolitics," TCR
Type "city organizational chart" into Google and review charts for: Pasadena, CA; Plano, IL; Concord, NH; New York, NY; and Baltimore, MD
Second Paper due in discussion sections
Week Thirteen, 11.18: SPACE
James Holston, "Dangerous Spaces of Citizenship," RUT
Neil Smith, "Gentrification," RUT
Keller Easterling, "Zone" Urban Transformations ®
BBC "The Box" web-based global tracking of a shipping container
<news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/business/2008/the_box/default.stm>
Week Fourteen, 11.25
No lecture. Only Thursday section meets.
Students should take the opportunity of the break to catch up on readings, work on projects, or other unfinished business.
Week Fifteen, 12.02: NEIGHBORHOOD
Gwendolyn Brooks, "Kitchenette Building" ®
Peter Calthorpe, "Designing the Region is Designing the Neighborhood," TCR
Jan Gehl, "Life Between Buildings," TCR
Neil Smith, "Gentrification," RUT
Teddy Cruz, Tijuana adaptation <www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/arts/design/19hous.html>
Building a Better Burb web site <buildabetterburb.org/housing.php>
Week Sixteen, 12.09: Sustainability
WCED, "Towards Sustainable Development," TCR
Stephen Wheeler, "Urban Planning and Global Climate Change," TCR
Timothy Beatley, "Planning For Sustainability in European Cities," TCR
Final exam posted on Monday, Dec 8th on Blackboard
Final exam due on Friday, Dec 12th at 5pm in Prof. Heathcott's mailbox
Please note, we will not accept exams by email, and late exams will not be accepted.
Week SEVENTEEN, 12.16: Classes and exams end. No class meetings.