Three main tasks:

1. Read texts carefully and come to class ready to discuss and engage.
2. Sign up for at least 2 Presentations (and upload reading guides to the google site several days before the session's date).
3. Write three short essays.
4. Short presentation on the final day of class (see below)

The Details:

1. The Readings (see syllabus).

2. Short Presentations & Writing of a Critical "Reading Guide" (in groups of 2-3 students per session)

(a) Early in the semester: Form presentation groups for each week. (Ideally each week should have two volunteers; however, depending on class size, several sessions may have 1-3 volunteers). Each student should select 2 sessions (though you are welcome to do a third). Write your name on the next to the weeks you select on the google site . Please review the syllabus and identify several weeks of interest, and talk to classmates about forming teams for a particular week. [Note: you are welcome to suggest additional or alternative readings for your session.. Just be sure to do this at least 1-2 weeks ahead of time, allowing time for the instructor to upload the readings to Canvas and/or eBooks.

(b) By TUESDAY of your week: Write and upload a critical "reading guide" to the google site.
(Suggested length: 8 - 12 paragraphs; graphics and links encouraged). The students in each group should write a single, integrated text. Be concise: do NOT simply summarize the readings, but instead provide insights, frameworks and distinctions that will be useful to your classmates as they read the texts. [This will require you to do your reading AHEAD of time, so plan accordingly.] You may include links to other sites where useful. Of course, do cite sources (and acknowledge use of quotes and ideas) where appropriate.

(c) Friday's Class: Start the class with a brief presentation (15-25 minutes) that illustrates the key themes, controversies, big questions of the week's readings. Creativity and engagement encouraged. [Note: this presentation may highlight elements from your emailed "reading guide," but your presentation should NOT simply be a retelling of your "reading guide." The classroom has digital monitor.

3. Short Essays
Throughout the semester, students will write several short essays that will be closely linked to the readings. Use double-spaced pages, and include a bibliography.   Be concise, analytical, precise and reflective. Guidelines on correct citations.

Essay One (Foundational Readings)
due: Oct 13 (revised date)

Answer one of the following questions.  (Suggested length: 5-6 pages). Where appropriate, cite course readings.   You are encouraged to examine connections and leitmotifs across the readings.  However, you need not analyze ALL readings from the first weeks of class.  Instead, you may find it useful to focus on several selected readings.

1. From Berlin to Chicago: We began by reading the German school, followed by the Chicago School. You might see continuities from the German School to the Chicago School. You might also see differences, reinterpretations, shifts in focus, or even no similarities at all. In your essay, select several representative essays from each school and contrast their respective views of cities and urbanization.  To focus your essay, select several aspects for comparison (examples include -- but are not limited to: the main questions posed; their underlying assumptions and biases; their emphasis on city-as-experience versus city-as-process; their methodological and theoretical approaches to the city; their units/scale of analysis, e.g., examining the city as a whole vs. the internal structure/neighborhoods of the city; etc).   Note:  remember to interpret the concept of "school" loosely and not monolithically: there is, understandably, a range of approaches found within each school.

2. City Love / City Fear:  The authors' stances towards urbanism and city life express a wide range of perspectives: great promises and excitement of urban life, but also great dangers and despair.  Some express a nostalgia for the rural "world we have lost," while others reveal a modernist zeal for all things new and a hope that cities offer new possibilities for human development.  (Lewis Mumford seems to alternately express both hope and doom, and he is likely not the only one expressing deep ambivalence.)  And one wonders if an author’s stance is based on the benefits and downsides of big, dense cities per se or based on other social processes associated with rapid urbanization (e.g., industrialization, mass consumerism, Modernism, modern capitalism, etc.). In your essay, select several texts and explore the strands of pro- and anti-urbanism in the texts.  What are their reasons for their divergent views of city life?

3. Tracing urban planning's worldview back to urban sociology? A generation or several ago, it was common for students in US urban planning graduate programs to read texts from the Chicago School. Examine the influence of the Chicago school (and/or German school) on urban planning. Can you identify assumptions, biases, priorities or uses of terminology in urban planning that have a direct lineage back to these sociological writings on cities? For example, what might the connection be between the early mapping of social segmentation (e.g., the Burgess concentric zone model) and 20th century zoning practices? Or between social science models of urban expansion and succession and planning policies to address urban growth, redevelopment and gentrification? Overall, can you see links between tools of analysis and tools of implementation/design/planning? (Note: it is an open question of whether the Chicago and German schools actually had a strong influence on planning -- or if their influence is overstated. Perhaps urban planners, in search of an intellectual history and theoretical grounding for their young field, looked around and conveniently found the Chicago School. I encourage you to both search for connections between early urban sociology and the rise of urban planning and also critically question this direct lineage.)

4. David Harvey and the restlessness of capitalist urban landscapes: “Part of the dynamic of capitalist accumulation is the necessity to build whole landscapes only to tear them down and build anew in the future” (Harvey, Spaces of Capital, 76). “The built environment internalizes within it the contradictory relations inherent in the accumulation of capital” (ibid, 82). “The inner contradictions of capitalism are expressed through the restless formation and re-formation of geographic landscapes. This is the tune to which the historical geography of capitalism must dance without cease” (ibid, 333).
In these and other passages, Harvey repeatedly speaks about the restlessness and contradictions — the ceaseless building-up and tearing down, of creating and destroying value, of placemaking and place-abandoning — not only of capitalism, but also of urbanization. (This contrasts with a view of urbanization as moving steadily towards an optimal steady state/equilibrium of land use.) In your essay, explore why and how Harvey comes to this conclusion about the volatile nature of urbanization. Then select one or more stakeholders/actors/interest groups in the city (e.g., architects, city planners, real estate agents, developers, mayors, city council, neighborhood residents, immigrants, etc.) and explore the implications for this group.

Essay Two
due: Nov 10

Answer one of the following questions.   Cite all sources and put all borrowed text in quotes. (see above link about citation guidelines.)

[questions to be posted]

Essay Three
due: Dec 16

Answer one of the following questions. Where appropriate, cite course readings (and other relevant readings).  see these citation guidelines.

[questions to be posted]

Friday, Dec 6 • Final Session slide and short presentation

This last session will provide an opportunity to reflect on your encounters with urban theory (its texts, ideas and authors) and to identify the key themes and debates of urban theory. Format is flexible: you can combine text, keywords, questions, illustrations, diagrams, cartoons, maps, poems, songs, timelines, etc. Be ready to discuss and compare each student's contribution. Creativity and insightfulness  welcomed. You might provide a conceptual map of urban theory. I welcome a range of approaches:  typologies of theories; critiques; a focus on the dominant ideas; a focus on silences and biases in conventional planning theory; a focus on the past, present and/or future of planning theory; the challenges of linking theory and practice; etc.

• You are to prepare two items:

(a) Each student is to come to the session with a one-page handout (bring copies for everyone, please) that articulates your understanding/conceptualization of urban theory. Format is flexible: you can combine text, keywords, questions, illustrations, diagrams, timelines, etc. Be ready to discuss and compare each student's contribution. Creativity and insightfulness  welcomed. You might provide a conceptual map of urban theory. 

(b) a brief, 3-5 minute oral presentation that concisely highlights your central points.

For examples of past years, see the Canvas Module file