THE CITY: THINKING WITH THE URBAN BUILT

This experiential learning course provides an introduction to the organization and design of the urban built environment. What kinds of spaces make up the city, how are they formed, and what impact do they have on people’s lives? We will consider these key questions of urban design and the distinct answers that have arisen in different historical and geographical contexts, with reference to a global array of case studies. And we will use the built environment of New York City as our classroom, with weekly field trips to iconic (and iconoclastic) examples of urban form, including sites from all five boroughs that reflect a diversity of cultural milieux. Through this comparative approach, the class will challenge the naïve view that the built environment is neutral or inert, emphasizing instead the inherent politics of urban design and the ongoing transformation and contestation of urban space. To arrive at this understanding, students will learn to think with the city, acquiring tools for understanding, representing, and analyzing the urban built environment.

The class is organized morphologically into six modules: image, park, plaza, street, block, and arcade. During each unit, students will also be introduced to a specific technique for analyzing urban form: figure-ground, collage, plan, diagram, map, projection, and section. The main assignments ask students to deploy these techniques to compare the urban spaces we encounter in the city.