Course Syllabus

SCHEDULE

[Bold is required reading]

Part 1: Survey

1) Sept 2: Introduction: Modern Utopias? Forms and Performances

2) Sept 9: Cities and "city-ness"

Georg Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life," 1905.

R. K. Home, "Town Planning & Garden Cities in the British Colonial Empire, 1910-1940," Planning Perspectives 5 (1990) 23-37.

Neil Brenner with Christian Schmid, "Planetary Urbanization," in Critique of Urbanization (Birkhäuser, 2017) 186-190.

Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of To-Morrow (London, 1902) SKIM.

Patrick Geddes, "The Valley Section," in David Lewis, ed., Urban Structure (1968) 65-71.

Konstanze Sylva Domhardt, “The Garden City Idea in the CIAM Discourse on Urbanism: A Path to Comprehensive Planning, Planning Perspectives 27 (2012) 173–197.

3) Sept 16: Units, Towns and Villages

Andrew Homer, "Creating New Communities: The Role of the Neighborhood Unit in Post-War British Planning," Contemporary British History 14:1 (2000) 63-80.

Juliana Maxim, "Mass Housing and Collective Experience: On the Notion of Microraion in Romania in the 1950s and 1960s," The Journal of Architecture 14: 1 (2009) 7-26.

Clarence A. Perry, “The Neighborhood Unit, a Scheme of Arrangement for the Family-Life Community,” in Neighborhood & Community Planning (NY: Committee on Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs, 1929) SKIM.

Lidwine Spoormans, Daniel Navas-Carrillo, Hielkje Zijlstra, Teresa Pérez-Cano, “Planning History of a Dutch New Town: Analyzing Lelystad through Its Residential Neighborhoods,” Urban Planning 4: 3 (2019) 102–116.

4) Sept 23: Smart Cites (eco, sustainable, digital, resilient)

Robert G. Hollands, "Beyond the Corporate Smart City" Glimpses of Other Possibilities of Smartness," in Marvin, Luque-Ayala, McFarlane, eds., Smart Urbanism: Utopian Vision or False Dawn? (Routledge, 2016) 168-184.

Nick Dunn and Paul Cureton, “Frictionless Futures: The Vision of Smartness and the Occlusion of Alternatives,” in Sergio M. Figueiredo, Sukanya Krishnamurthy, Torsten Schroedery, eds., Architecture and the Smart City (Routledge, 2019) 17-27.

Andres Luque-Ayala and Simon Marvin, "Developing a Critical Understanding of Smart Urbanism?" Urban Studies 52: 12 (2015) 2105–2116.

Rob Kitchin, Tracey P. Lauricault and Gavin McArdle, "Smart Cities and the Politics of Urban Data," in Simon Marvin, Andres Luque-Ayala and Colin McFarlane, eds., Smart Urbanism: Utopian Vision or False Dawn? (2016) 16-31.

Keller Easterling, "Zone: The Spatial Softwares of Extrastatecraft," Places Journal [online] (June 2012).

5): Sept 30: Platforms and Platformization

Federico Caprotti, I.‑Chun Catherine Chang and Simon Joss, “Beyond the Smart City: A Typology of Platform Urbanism,” Urban Transformations 4: 4 (2022) 1-18.

Shannon Mattern, “Methodolatry and the Art of Measure,” Places Journal [online] (November 2013). 

Jathan Sadowski, "Who Owns the Future City? Phases of Technological Urbanism and Shifts in Sovereignty," Urban Studies 58:8 (2021) 1732–1744.

Orit Halpern, Robert Mitchell and Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan, "The Smartness Mandate: Notes Toward a Critique," Grey Room 68 (Summer 2017) 107-125.

Part 2: Themes

6) Oct 7. Knowledge Mobilities

Ayala Levin, “The Village Within: An Alternative Genealogy of the Urban Village,” Journal of Architecture 23: 3 (2018) 392-417

Arturo Almandoz, "Towards Brasilia & Ciudad Guayana: Development, Urbanization & Regional Planning in Latin America, 1940s–1960s," Planning Perspectives 31: 1 (2016) 31–53.

Sanjeev Vidyarthi, “Reimagining the American Neighborhood Unit for India,” in Healey and Upton, eds., Crossing Borders: International Exchange & Planning Practices (Routledge, 2010) 73-93.

Annapurna Shaw, "Town Planning in Postcolonial India, 1947-65: Chandigarh Re-examined," Urban Geography 30:8 (2009) 857-878.

Michelle Provoost, "Exporting New Towns: The Welfare City in Africa," in Mark Swenarton, Tom Avermaete, Dirk van den Heuvel, eds., Architecture and the Welfare State (Routledge, 2014) 277-297.

7) Oct 14: Control and Freedom

Reyner Banham, Paul Barker, Peter Hall, Cedric Price, "Non-Plan Experiment in Freedom," New Society (March 20, 1969) 435-443

Wouter Vanstiphout, "Ideology as an Achilles Heel: Visionary Urban Planning in Amsterdam and Teheran," in Provoost, ed., New Towns for the 21^st Century, 46-57.

Alan Hess, "Discovering Irvine: A Radical Alternative to Suburban Design and a Boldly Rationalized Refinement," Places Journal (October 2014).

J. Mark Souther, "Suburban Swamp: The Rise and Fall of Planned New Town Communities in New Orleans East," Planning Perspectives, 23 (April 2008) 197–219.

Kerry Cupers, “Programming the Villes Nouvelles,” The Social Project: Housing Postwar France (2014) 183-222.

8) Oct 21: "Types"

Rachel Keaton, "Songjiang New City, China" & "Tin Shui Wai, Hong Kong," in Rising in the East: Contemporary New Towns in China (International New Town Institute, 2011) 354-403.

Xiangming Chen et. al., "Localizing the Production of Global Cities: A Comparison of New Town Developments Around Shanghai and Kolkata," City & Community 8:4 (2009) 433-63.

Nick Dunn and Paul Cureton, "Frictionless Futures: The Vision of Smartness and the Occlusion of Alternatives," in Sergio M. Figueiredo, Sukanya Krishnamurthy, Torsten Schroedery, eds., Architecture and the Smart City (Routledge, 2019).

Maroš Krivý, "Towards a Critique of Cybernetic Urbanism: The Smart City and the Society Of Control," Planning Theory (2016) 1-20.

9) Oct 28:  GOVERNANCE, Municipal, State, Regional, Colonial, Welfare,

Michelle Provoost et. al., "Governing a New Town" in City in a Box, Volume 34 (2012) 102-117.

Luis F. Alvarez León and Jovanna Rosen, "Technology as Ideology in Urban Governance," Annals of the American Association of Geographers 110 (2020) 497-506.

Miguel Valdez, Matthew Cook, Helen Roby, "Epistemic (In)justice in a Smart City: Proto-Smart and Post-Smart Infrastructures for Urban Data," in Debra Mackinnon, Ryan Burns, and Victoria Fast, eds., Digital (In)Justice in the Smart City (Toronto 2023) 146-161.

Part 3: Futures

10) Nov 4: ELECTION DAY

11) Nov 11: Smart and Anti-Smart?

Nancy Odendaal, "Smart Innovation at the Margins: Learning from Cape Town and Kibera," in Andrew Karvonen, Federico Cugurullo and Federico Caprotti, eds., Inside Smart Cities: Place, Politics and Urban Innovation (Routledge, 2018) 243-55.

Hug March and Ramon Ribera-Fumaz, "Barcelona: From Corporate Smart City to Technological Sovereignty," in Andrew Karvonen, Federico Cugurullo and Federico Caprotti, eds., Inside Smart Cities: Place, Politics & Urban Innovation (Routledge, 2018) 229-40.

Pádraig R. Carmody, James T. Murphy, Richard Grant and Francis Y. Owusu, "Fantasy Urbanization in Africa: The Political Economy of Heterotopias," in The Urban Question in Africa: Uneven Geographies of Transition (2024) 76-91.

Kola Heyward-Rotimi, "Corporate Afrofuturism: Development Strategies for African Smart Cities," Mediapolis 8: 1 (2023).

12) Nov 18: Platform Futures? Stack, Platformization, algorithms

Anke Strüver and Sybille Bauriedl, eds., Platformization of Urban Life: Towards a Technocapitalist Transformation of European Cities (transcript 2022), excerpt.

Sarah Barns, Platform Urbanism: Negotiating Platform Ecosystems in Connected Cities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) excerpt.

Irene Bronsvoort and Justus L Uitermark, "Seeing the Street through Instagram: Digital Platforms and the Amplification of Gentrification," Urban Studies 59, no. 14 (November 2022) 2857–74.

13 Nov 25. TBD

 

 

These readings from 2024 (FYI)

1) Sept 3: Introduction: Genealogies of “Smartness” and Utopia

Carlo Ratti and Matthew Claudel, "Wiki City" in The City of Tomorrow: Sensors, Networks, Hackers, and the Future of Urban Life (Yale, 2016) 25-39.

Andres Luque-Ayala and Simon Marvin, "Developing a Critical Understanding of Smart Urbanism?" Urban Studies 52: 12 (2015) 2105–2116.

Rob Kitchin, Tracey P. Lauricault and Gavin McArdle, "Smart Cities and the Politics of Urban Data," in Simon Marvin, Andres Luque-Ayala and Colin McFarlane, eds., Smart Urbanism: Utopian Vision or False Dawn? (2016) 16-31.

Jathan Sadowski, "Who Owns the Future City? Phases of Technological Urbanism and Shifts in Sovereignty," Urban Studies 58:8 (2021) 1732–1744.

4) Sept 24: Metropolis and Its Discontents

Georg Simmel, "Metropolis and Mental Life," 1903.

Konstanze Sylva Domhard, “The Garden City Idea in the CIAM Discourse on Urbanism: A Path to Comprehensive Planning, Planning Perspectives 27 (2012) 173–197.

R. K. Home, “Town Planning and Garden Cities in the British Colonial Empire, 1910-1940,” Planning Perspectives 5 (1990) 23-37.

Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of To-Morrow (London, 1902) excerpt.

Patrick Geddes, The Valley Section (1925)

5) Oct 01: Discourse and Experience

Mark Llewellyn, "Producing and Experiencing Harlow: Neighborhood Units and Narratives of New Town Life 1947–53," Planning Perspectives 19 (2004) 155–174.

Sanjeev Vidyarthi, “Reimagining the American Neighborhood Unit for India,” in Patsy Healey, Robert Upton, eds., Crossing Borders: International Exchange & Planning Practices (Routledge, 2010) 73-93.

Andrew Homer, "Creating New Communities: The Role of the Neighborhood Unit in Post-War British Planning," Contemporary British History 14:1 (2000) 63-80.

6) Oct 8. Districts and Neighborhoods

Lidwine Spoormans, Daniel Navas-Carrillo, Hielkje Zijlstra, Teresa Pérez-Cano, “Planning History of a Dutch New Town: Analyzing Lelystad through Its Residential Neighborhoods,” Urban Planning 4: 3 (2019) 102–116.

Iain Jackson, "Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew's Early Housing and Neighborhood Planning in Sector-22, Chandigarh," Planning Perspectives 28:1 (2013) 1-26.

Annapurna Shaw, "Town Planning in Postcolonial India, 1947-65: Chandigarh Re-examined," Urban Geography 30:8 (2009) 857-878.

7) Oct 15. Other classifications

Ayala Levin, “The Village Within: An Alternative Genealogy of the Urban Village,” Journal of Architecture 23: 3 (2018) 392-417

Reyner Banham, Paul Barker, Peter Hall, Cedric Price, "Non-Plan Experiment in Freedom," New Society (March 20, 1969) 435-443

Kenny Cupers, "Mapping and Making Community in the Postwar European City," Journal of Urban History 42: 6 (2016) 1009–1028.

Arturo Almandoz, "Towards Brasilia & Ciudad Guayana: Development, Urbanization & Regional Planning in Latin America, 1940s–1960s," Planning Perspectives 31: 1 (2016) 31–53.

9) Oct 29: Smart City interlude

Nancy Odendaal, "Smart Innovation at the Margins: Learning from Cape Town and Kibera," in Andrew Karvonen, Federico Cugurullo and Federico Caprotti, eds., Inside Smart Cities: Place, Politics and Urban Innovation (Routledge, 2018) 243-55.

Hug March and Ramon Ribera-Fumaz, "Barcelona: From Corporate Smart City to Technological Sovereignty," in Andrew Karvonen, Federico Cugurullo and Federico Caprotti, eds., Inside Smart Cities: Place, Politics & Urban Innovation (Routledge, 2018) 229-40.

10) Nov 5: New Town Shifts

Kerry Cupers, “Programming the Villes Nouvelles,” The Social Project: Housing Postwar France (2014) 183-222.

Wouter Vanstiphout, "Ideology as an Achilles Heel: Visionary Urban Planning in Amsterdam and Teheran," in Provoost, ed., New Towns for the 21^st Century, 46-57.

Martino Tattara, "Brasilia’s Prototypical Design: Superquadra and the Project of the City," Architectural Design 11 (2011) 46-55.

11) Nov 12: Made in the USA

Alan Hess, "Discovering Irvine: A Radical Alternative to Suburban Design and a Boldly Rationalized Refinement," Places Journal (October 2014). https://placesjournal.org/article/discovering-irvine/

Mark Souther, "Suburban Swamp: The Rise and Fall of Planned New Town Communities in New Orleans East," Planning Perspectives, 23 (April 2008) 197–219.

Andrew Herscher, "Black and Blight," Cheng, Davis, Wilson, eds., Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present (Pittsburgh, 2020) 291-307.

Andrew Friedman, "The Global Postcolonial Moment and the American New Town: India, Reston, Dodoma, Journal of Urban History 38:3 (2012) 553–576.

12) Nov 19: Changes and Hybrids

Peter Gotsch, "AlphaVille-Tamboré (Brazil): A NeoTown Between Planning and Self-Organization," in Provoost, ed., New Towns for the 21^stCentury: The Planned vs the Unplanned City (Int’l New Town Institute 2010) 60-71.

Pádraig R. Carmody, James T. Murphy, Richard Grant and Francis Y. Owusu, "Fantasy Urbanization in Africa: The Political Economy of Heterotopias," The Urban Question in Africa: Uneven Geographies of Transition (Wiley, 2024) 76-91.

Patsy Healey, "Diffusion of the New Town Idea in the Developing World," in Ian Masser and Richard Williams, eds., Learning From Other Countries: The Cross-National Dimension in Urban Policy-Making (1986).

13) Nov 26: Blur

Rachel Keaton, "Songjiang New City, China" & "Tin Shui Wai, Hong Kong," in Rising in the East: Contemporary New Towns in China(International New Town Institute, 2011) 354-403.

Xiangming Chen, Lan Wang, Ratoola Kundu, "Localizing the Production of Global Cities: A Comparison of New Town Developments Around Shanghai and Kolkata," City & Community 8:4 (2009) 433-463.

Michelle Provoost, "Exporting New Towns: The Welfare City in Africa," in Swenarton, Avermaete and van den Heuvel, eds., Architecture and the Welfare State (Routledge, 2015) 277-295.