Students are expected to complete all
the required readings before the scheduled class time, actively participate
in class discussions and presentations, write three short essay assignments,
attend and critique a planning board meeting, and write a final exam. Evaluation
of your work will be based on substantive content, the logic of your argument,
and writing quality. (some tips on writing) Late
assignments will result in point reductions.
Format and Style Guidelines (READ
CAREFULLY):
- Please use a single staple in the upper left-hand corner. You do NOT
need a cover page. Do NOT staple like a bound book, and do NOT include
a plastic cover. (Those formalities simply make it harder to read your
essays.)
- Write concise, analytical answers.
- IMPORTANT: Use complete and
correct citations. Refer to all readings used (including course
readings and materials found on the Internet). Incorporate the ideas
from multiple sources (rather than basing your essay on just one
text). You are encouraged to also incorporate ideas from the recommended
readings and/or outside sources.
- The essays are NOT a place to simply create purely descriptive summaries
of the readings. Instead, use your essay as a place to demonstrate
knowledge of the readings, to address critical debates in planning
theory, to explore connections between various ideas in planning
(e.g., between Garden Cities and New Urbanism), and to work out your
own theory of planning.
- You may strongly agree with the class readings, vehemently object,
be ambivalent, or not be moved either way. In any case, be thoughtful,
reflective, critical and nuanced in your essay answers. One function
of planning theory is to challenge assumptions, conventional wisdom
and accepted stereotypes.
- You are encouraged to discuss the readings with other students. However,
each student is expected to submit his/her own individual, original
responses.
- Regarding page lengths (4 - 5 pages, double-spaced, not counting the bibliography / page of citations). Please use an easily readable font style (e.g., Times) and font size (e.g., 12 point), with adequate margins (e.g., 1 inch on all sides, or 1 inch top/bottom and 1.25 inches on the sides).
- additional writing advice
Three Short Essays
Throughout the semester students will write several essays
in response to questions tied to the course readings.
Essay One (due Sep 29)
Answer ONE of the questions below. Read
the instructions above about format and style. Please use at least three
of the assigned readings to support your argument. (Feel free to
refer to other sources as well.) Page length: 5 pages (not counting the bibliography).
-
The idea of Community: A reoccurring theme in the readings is the nature of community -- how it is shaped by scale, by the built environment, by proximity (or distance), by the rural or urban character, etc. Select at least three relevant class readings and discuss their views of "community." What assumptions do each make about the role, preconditions, benefits and dynamics of community?
-
The relevance of garden cities: Some contemporary environmentalists and community planners have apparently found a model for future cities in a century-old plan: Ebenezer Howard's 1898 proposal for Garden Cities. Discuss which of Howard's ideas are still relevant for today's post-industrial sprawling society. Can planners still learn anything from Garden Cities? You may find it useful to distinguish between the social, physical, political and/or economic aspects of his proposals.
-
To fix or to start anew? The various authors we have read so far have proposed a wide variety of visions for the city. Some have outlined incremental reforms of existing cities, while others have proposed fundamentally new alternatives. Using several examples from class readings, discuss plans that engage both sides of this debate: rehabilitation versus new start. Explain why each author chose the reformist or the radical path and how that choice was tied to their critique of existing cities.
-
Origins and inherited values: With its origins at the start of the 20th century, planning is arguably a child of the Progressive Era and Modernism. Discuss to what extent planning's contemporary values and priorities reflect these historical origins, and whether these values and priorities are still relevant today.
Essay Two (due Nov 1) [revised date]
Answer ONE of the questions below. Read
the instructions above about format and style. Please use at least three
of the assigned readings to support your argument. (Feel free to
refer to other sources as well.) Page length: 5 pages (not counting the bibliography).
-
Based on a careful analysis of the readings and reflection upon class lectures and discussions in UP540 and other courses, respond to the following questions: How central (or marginal) are issues of race, gender and/or sexual identity in the graduate planning curriculum? If you agree with the current approach to these topics in the curriculum, explain why. If you see shortcomings of the current approach, argue for an alternative approach. If useful, define and differentiate the themes of “equity,” “justice” and “diversity.”
-
Planners have often used the Robert Moses/Jane Jacobs dichotomy to juxtapose the dangers of over concentrated power and ambition with the benefits of decentralized, preservation-minded activism and everyday urbanism. And yet in the past few years Robert Moses has been experiencing something of a rehabilitation, with renewed respect for his impact on New York City’s urban development. In your essay, outline both the earlier and the contemporary themes of the Moses/Jacobs debate. (For example, where is power held in each of the two schemas?) If we are indeed witnessing a revisionist history of Robert Moses’ legacy, does this shift suggest a larger re-evaluation of the role of power, large projects and top-down authority in urban development?
-
The claim: Traditional public spaces are being threatened due to privatization and/or securement (through restricted access, physical barriers, etc.). The loss of common public spaces leads directly to the decline of a shared public interest, and thus to the decline of civil society.
The counter-claim: The threat to public spaces is exaggerated, and there is no direct link between public space, public interest and civil society. In addition, social critics who decry the loss of a shared public space get their urban history wrong: they inaccurately glorify and romanticize a lost era of great public spaces (that never quite existed). The real work of a democratic civil society takes place in social, political and economic institutions, not in physical public spaces.
Citing class readings (and other sources if relevant), develop a rigorous, analytical argument in response to these opposing assertions.
Writers such as Peter Hall, Leonie Sandercock and James Scott have strongly criticized Modernism as a source of numerous ills in cities and in urban planning. In your essay, select several class writings and analyze the anti-modernist arguments. What specifically about modernism elicits such objections? Discuss whether these attacks on modernism are valid, wrong and/or misplaced. Be sure to define terms and disaggregate the concept of "modernism" where appropriate.
Essay Three (due Friday, Dec 3 -- by 5:00 pm in instructor's mailbox)
Answer ONE of the questions below. Read
the instructions above about format and style. Please use at least three
of the assigned readings to support your argument. (Feel free to
refer to other sources as well.) Page length: 5 pages (not counting the bibliography).
-
The word "suburb" is defined as "the country
lying immediately outside a town or city; more particularly, those residential
parts belonging to a town or city that lie immediately outside and adjacent
to its walls or boundaries." (OED,
2nd). This suggests that the identity of suburbs has been
dependent on its relationship to the central city. However, many writers
(such as Robert Fishman) have observed a historic transformation of city-suburb
relations since the era of the "classic suburb;" our historical conception of suburbs may be increasingly antiquated and inaccurate. The majority of
Americans now live in suburbs, and the range and variation of suburbs are so vast that the term "suburb" itself may be too simple and crude to encompass all the permutations. In addition, many of these suburbs are largely disconnected to the central city. The Detroit
- Southeast Michigan region is but one example of this transformation. If
we now live in a "suburban
nation," discuss how planners need to rethink and update their
understanding of the "suburb": e.g., its function, nomenclature, relationship to the central city, variation of forms, and its merits and
dangers as a human settlement pattern. Where appropriate, discuss the veracity of various new suburban typologies articulated in the readings.
"A region, someone has wryly observed, is an area safely larger than the last one to whose problems we found no solution." Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Random House, 1961), p. 410.
Referring to class readings, what are the stated (and implied) advantages of planning at the regional scale? What are the disadvantages? Select several of the often-cited goals of planning (e.g., social justice, environmental protection, transportation efficiency, economic development, infrastructural development, good design, etc.); compare the regional scale to the municipal scale in how well (or poorly) each scale of planning can address such goals.
-
Advocates of communicative-action (or collaborative) planning (e.g.,
Healey, Innes, Forester, etc.) have emphasized the shortcomings of past planning
models. However, subsequent authors (e.g., Pennington, Flyvbjerg, Richardson)
have pointed to the weaknesses of the communicative-action model. In your
essay, analyze both the strengths and weaknesses of the communicative-action
model of planning. Under what circumstances might the approach be more or less
effective? Finally, how might the communicative-action model be modified
to address these apparent shortcomings?
-
Arguments for and against the legitimacy of public-sector urban planning often reflect underlying assumptions and beliefs about the free market (e.g., its dynamics, its strengths and weaknesses, its frequency of failure, its stability or volatility, its impact on equity, its need for government intervention, etc.). In your essay, use course readings to identify at least three different views of
the relationship between planning and the capitalist market economy. Then discuss how each of these three views, in turn, leads to an argument for and/or against public planning.
Analysis
and Critique of a Planning or Zoning Board Meeting (due Nov. 17)
suggested length: 4-5 pages [you may turn in this assignment anytime during
the semester before the due date]
You are to attend a meeting of a planning agency and write up an analysis
of the session. You may choose a planning board or commission, a zoning board,
an historic preservation board, a transportation commission, or any similar
public meeting dealing primarily with city, county or regional planning issues.
The locale is up you: you could choose Ann Arbor, Detroit, Washtenaw County,
Ann Arbor Township, Pittsfield, Toledo, Ypsilanti, or any other place of interest.
You may find it helpful to attend the meeting with several other students.
Your paper should include the following:
- cursory background information date and place of meeting; the type of
planning agency; the community's size, location and social-economic profile
and how these factors might shape planning issues;
- the meeting's format, including structure of agenda and length of meeting;
the board's composition (e.g., affiliation if known, gender, race); profile
of audience, etc.
- a summary of the issues covered (You need not give a run-down of all 17
agenda items down to a variance approval for a two-car garage. Instead, provide
a brief overview on the types of issues, with a bit more discussion on the
few most interesting topics.)
- MOST IMPORTANTLY: an analysis and critique of the meeting's
process. For example: How effective was the meeting? How "democratic" did
the process appear? How much citizen participation was involved? How
did the board respond to the public? What was the role of the staff planners
in the meeting? Did it appear that decisions were actually being made
at the meeting, or that the real decisions had already been made behind
closed doors? How did the board deal with controversy? What was the language
used in the meeting: planner's jargon, or layperson's English? Did you
see any ideas from planning theory (e.g., comprehensive vs. incremental
planning, equity and advocacy planning, communicative-based action vs.
technocratic planning) reflected in the proceedings? If the meeting was
remarkably boring, what might be the reason? and so forth. (This
is the core section of the assignment, and should be the main focus of your
writing efforts.)