City Since the Enlightenment, Theory and Experience

This course is centered on the question of how people experience, think about, and contest urban form. Study begins with the Enlightenment, when science and reason treated physical form as something that could be studied, tested, and re-engineered, leading to the alteration of streets, public space, and the idea of what a city could become. Students move between close reading of plans and streets, key texts in urban theory and philosophy, and accounts of daily life in different city fabrics. Weekly modules pair cases with ideas from environmental psychology, phenomenology, and philosophy of the city. Students practice short written arguments and small interpretive diagrams. By the end, they can narrate major shifts in urban form, link them to ways of seeing and inhabiting the city, and analyze how power, ideology, and memory are built into streets, blocks, and districts.

Interested in a certificate program? This course is part of the Introduction to Urban Design Certificate.