ID144

Description

The New England Region is rich with urban and city planning exemplars that show the contrasts, contradictions and realities of city planning practice, past and present. For instance, in MA we have numerous industrial (and deindustrialized) cities, such as Worcester, Holyoke, Lowell, and Lawrence (renamed Gateway Cities). We also have "Postmodern Boston, Belle Cit ", and we have Gilded Age cities, such as Newport (RI). This undergraduate course prepares students to "read the watermark of urban and city planning" in New England. We journey through New England's regional history and urban sustainability challenges, while we also sample city planning foundational texts and classics (F. Law Olmstead, F. Engels, L. Mumford, Jane Jacobs, Gwendolyn Wright, Kevin Lynch, David Harvey, Manuel Castells, Robert Bullard). The course also exposes students to critical reformulations and challenges to the city planning classics. We also visit various cities and assess urban forms and landscapes in the region. The class features field visits (Holyoke, Lowell, Worcester, Boston, Newport). The course seeks to cultivate students' urban pragmatic intelligence. Urban pragmatics refers to applying practical, result-oriented thinking to city challenges, focusing on real-world usefulness. The course is mainly based upon the urban experience of the United States.