City Life

These questions are all due Monday, April 21.  Please get volunteers from your groups for review.  Peer Reviews are due in class on Wednesday, April 29.

Commercial Landscapes.

1) Goss and Crawford both discuss the role of nostalgia in the design of shopping malls.  Summarize their viewpoint about what the role of nostalgia is in consumer culture, and provide examples of this constructed nostalgia from the design of malls, houses or other buildings you know, or from other (non-design) realms of consumer culture, or from the design of malls, houses or other buildings.  Discuss how this strategy of creating nostalgia is successful, when American are so very different and have different personal experiences.

2) Staeheli and Mitchell argue that in attempting to replace the traditional town square, mall designers have attempted to duplicate traditional forms of “community,” but not the “public.”  Describe their argument.  If this is true, judge whether this creation of communal, but not public, space represents a loss to society, or whether American society has found other outlets for the public.

Geographies of Fear

1) Mike Davis and Day et. al. both describe examples of “defensive,” but they give very different interpretations.  Describe these interpretations, and explain and justify what should be the proper role, if any,  for defense in urban design.

Rebellion in the City:

In these articles, we have various examples of people using designed spaces in ways other than intended. Place these writings alongside other writing this semester that lamented the loss of “truly public” space, or that argued for approaches to design with the goal of influencing  behavior (such as consumer or criminal) behavior.  Discuss the relationship between designed spaces and human experiences.  Can experience be controlled through design?  To what extent? If experiences can not be completely controlled by design, what should the purpose of design be?

Week 15: Apr 22 Rebellion in the City

Betancour, Ana and Peter Hasdell. ‘Tango: A Choreography of Urban Displacement’ in The City Cultures Reader (Second Edition), M. Miles and T. Hall, with I. Bordain eds. pp 277-290.

Borden, Iain. ‘A Performative Critique of the City: The Urban Practice of Skateboarding’ in The City Cultures Reader (Second Edition), M. Miles and T. Hall, with I. Bordain eds. pp 291-298.

Stevens, Quentin and Kim Dovey. ‘Appropriating the Spectacle: Play and Politics in a Leisure Landscape.’ Journal of Urban Design. 9(3):351-365. 2004.

Week 14: Apr 15 City of Fear

Davis, Mike ‘Fortress LA’ in Variations on a Theme Park. Michael Sorkin, ed.

Day, Kristen, Craig Anderson, Michael Powe, Tracy McMillan and Diane Winn Craig Anderson, Michael Powe, Tracy McMillan and Diane Winn, “Remaking Minnie Street: The Impacts of Urban Revitalization on Crime and Pedestrian Safety”, Journal of Planning Education and Research 26:315-331

Here are some examples for you to get ideas from.

North Boulder Area Plan

Curtis Park Plan (in Denver)

So I just realized that the dates on the course schedule are off again, but the weeks are right. We are in Week 13 now. I have copied this week’s readings below.

Week 13: Apr 8 Commercial Landscapes

Crawford, Margaret. “The World in a Shopping Mall” in Variations on a Theme Park. Michael Sorkin. ed. pp. 3-30, 27pp.

Goss, Jon. “The ‘Magic of the Mall’: An Analysis of Form, Function, and Meaning in the Contemporary Retail Built Environment” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Mar., 1993), pp. 18-47

Staeheli, Lynn and Don Mitchell. USA’s Destiny? 2006 “Regulating Space and Creating Community in American Shopping Malls” Urban Studies 43(5-6):977-992

If you choose to write on one of these questions, the rough draft is due on Friday, April 17th. Please email a copy to me, as well as a copy to three of your classmates. It would be easiest if you emailed it to three members of your group.

1) Camillo Sitte argued for a more aesthetic, rather than scientific approach to planning and designing cities. This call was largely ignored, but the argument has had renewed force over the last few decades. Discuss what you think the role of art should be in city design. You can take this in many possible directions, but as one suggestion, you might consider in what way the city is not like art, for example, art may be commissioned, it does not have to by, whereas urban design is nearly always commissioned; or that public participation in art is voluntary, but public participation in the city is not voluntary.

2) Audirac and Harvey both comment on the role of “sense of community” in Traditional Neighborhood Development and New Urbanism (you might also recall the reading from SuburbanNation earlier this term). Discuss what you think the role of community ought to be in American cities or suburbs. Be sure to define community, and to consider the geographic and social scale of “community.” (For example, the geographic scale of community is very different in New Urbanist design than it is in Jacob’s writings).

3) Sternberg argues that urban experiences are uncommodifiable, and thus urban design are needed in order to unify these experiences. An alternative reading of the role of urban design is that that urban experience, and particularly commercial (shopping) experiences have been commodified; we have Pearl Street, 16th Street, Flatirons Mall, etc. all of which have created (or duplicated) commercial experiences that are saleable, and perhaps even experiences that are standardized. One might see New Urbanism as  creating standards for design that also standardize the residential experience. Discuss the role of commodification in urban design. Is commodification possible? Is it desirable? Are urban experiences being standardized for the purpose of commodification? Does urban design contribute to this or does it help?

I apologize, the links on the semester-long reading list were broken.  But they have been corrected, and here are the readings.

Week 12: Apr 1 New Urbanism

Can we recreate positive, civic cities through new forms?

Congress for New Urbanism, ‘Charter of the New Urbanism’, pp.1-2

Harvey, David. “The New Urbanism and the Communitarian Trap” Harvard Design Magazine, Winter/Spring 1997, Number 1.

Audirac, Ivonne and Anne H. Shermyen, 1994. “An Evaluation of Neotraditional Design’s Social Prescription: Postmodern Placebo or Remedy for Suburban Malaise?” Journal of Planning Education and Research 13: 161-73.

Grant, Jill, ‘Mixed Use in Theory and Practice’, Journal of the American Planning Association, Winter 2002, Vol 68, No. 1, pp.71-84

Nasar, Jack. ‘Does Neotraditional Development Build Community?’ Journal of Planning Education and Research, Autumn 2003, Vol 23, No. 1, pp.58-68.