Course Goals and Requirements
Course Goals and Requirements
City 365 Techniques of the City: Utopias/Dystopias/Suburbia
LEARNING GOALS:As Friedman shows us, the imagination of better forms and experiences of civic space have long been part of human history as documents, constructions, social movements and concrete places and a fundamental charge for all urbanists. Whether envisioning a new order (ou/no or eu/good- topos place, first appearing in English in 1524 with Sir Thomas More) or excoriating a terrible place (dystopia, first use 1854 in reference to Ireland), these tools galvanize our imagination and action. Yet, in many cases, we also associate utopianism with its non-placefulness: failure, ruin, disappearance, dystopia.
In this seminar, we approach this global tradition through a focus on how and where utopias have been built and what has happened to them. One axiom is that even while utopias may be complete inversions of existing urbanism, they are linked to these entities and their development as well. Hence, we interpose the suburb as an experimental space of urbanism outside the city as a place to understand aspirations, innovations, connections and failures. In particular, we should note that while the most independent and structured utopias may end, suburbs by contrast live, change and adapt while altering ideas of the cities.
This core interest poses a range of questions we will only sample while experimenting with our own ideas. From the beginning, we must be aware that cosmological utopias differ from socio-economic formats, that racialized utopias clash with inclusive models, that aesthetics and ecotopian models may produce different results and that balances will change in the thinking of their citizens and those who live around them and interact with them. To frame discussion, we will begin with utopian/suburban constructions in the Western tradition and the U.S., with particular attention to an African-American counterpoint, and then look at Sino-futurism as an alternative cosmology and realization of new cities as well as other questions and positions that challenge classical models. We will also explore other issues of AI and praxis, with reference to New Urbanism.
EVALUATION: A seminar like a utopian community is collective as well as individual. This means you should attend regularly having read and thought about materials. Writing and thought should be your own: AI represents both Utopia and Dystopia for many but should not be a primary tool here.
Hence, a significant part of evaluation will be based on class participation (30%) and cumulative that comments and/assignments, sometimes reflexive. Given the demands many of you facing in a thesis, we will not do a final research assignment but build on reflection through the term. In the first half of the term we will assemble notes on our models for community in a series of assignments that are worth 30% of your grade: 10% for regular submissions and 20% for evaluation of final project. In the second half you will choose another community outside the class to analyze in steps (20%, including regular weekly submissions). Finally, you will be asked to use that case and other readings and examples from the course to critize your own process of urban visioning (20%).