The course is concerned with the multidisciplinary field and practice of urban design. It includes a review of historical approaches to urban design and current movements in the field, as well as discussion of the elements of urban form, theories of good city form, scales of urban design, implementation approaches, and challenges and opportunities for the discipline. Learning from cities via fieldwork is an integral part of the course.

What is urban design? To what extent can substantial changes in urban environments be ‘designed’? Whose perspectives, values, and interests shape those changes? Can urban design address the crises facing contemporary cities, from climate change to growing socio-economic inequality? This class explores these questions by introducing the field and practice of urban design. It is an introductory course for undergraduate students who want to understand the aims, methods, contexts, and challenges of urban design. Learning about cities via field investigations is an integral part of the course. Urban design brings together the concerns and methods of several different professional and intellectual domains. Like architects, urban designers are concerned with how people experience and reshape space and materials in the built environment. Like landscape architects, urban designers study and intervene in natural processes related to water, soil, air, and life. Like city planners, urban designers are concerned with the institutions, rules, and processes that govern changes in urban space. The scales of urban design interventions can vary enormously. At the small scale, urban designers might design new street fixtures like benches, bollards, curbs, or street tree wells or they might be responsible for establishing rules for commercial signage. At the other end of the spatial spectrum, urban designers can contribute to regional plans governing issues such as transportation, housing, and green space. Similarly, urban design spans temporal domains. Some urban design work is focused on understanding and preserving treasured elements of an area’s past, from historic buildings to cultural landscapes and open spaces.Other aspects of urban design require anticipating, accommodating, and shaping future changes, including rapid shrinkage and growth in population or environmental changes like those associated with climate change. Urban design generally has the goal of making urban environments better than they are. That is, urban designers pursue elusive, evolving, and diverse ideas of the “good city.” In the late 19thcentury, pursuing the ‘good city’ often meant making new industrial cities healthier, more orderly, and more beautiful.In the mid-20th century, dominant ideas of the ‘good city’ drove many cities to retrofit dense urban areas to accommodate highways and parking lots so that inner cities could compete with growing car-oriented suburbs. Contemporary notions of the ‘good city’ are varied and contested. Some call for “smart cities” in which sensors and other technologies enable more efficient infrastructure and management. In response to mounting threats from climate change, many urban designers call for compact, walkable, and low-carbon cities and built environments that are resilient to growing threats like floods, droughts, and heat waves. For some, ever-increasing socio-economic inequality is the greatest concern and the good city’ must advance the goals of justice, equity,and expanding the “right to the city”. Over the course of the term, we will explore evolving ideas of the ‘good city’ through reading, lectures, discussions, assignments, and field exercises.

The class meets in person (synchronously). The "Time Conflict Allowance" is set to allow students to enroll initially while they are working on their schedules. The actual time conflict will not be allowed in this class.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.