Course #: ARCU4400
Title: City organization and Planning (
Credits: 0.5
Instructor: Dr. Bruce M. Firestone, B. Eng. (Civil),
M.Eng.-Sci., Ph.D.
Prerequisite: ARCH
1000 and ARCH 2300 or Permission of the Lecturer
Course Type: Urban Studies—History/Theory Elective
Term: Summer
or Fall
Course Description:
This
course includes study of Urban Economics, Urban Design and Real Estate
Development as well as the Sustainability of the City. It considers the
neo-urbanist view that the design of the city, at the micro and macro levels,
can be both environmentally and economically more sustainable. It
focuses on understanding the economic, technological, environmental and
political forces that are creating the built form of the city from the end of
19th Century to the beginning of the 21st Century and beyond.
Jane
Jacobs has described the City as the source of all human progress. The development of villages then towns and
cities brought humans together in organized groups, first for mutual protection
and then later for skill sharing and specialization. There is no doubt that
humans are among the most codependent of species on the planet and that
tremendous progress has been achieved by bringing people together in urban
agglomerations. Such a gathering of people in the built form of our environment
has permitted them to identify ways in which they can help each other for
mutual benefit-so that more pie for one does not mean less for the other.
Architects have a special responsibility and position of leadership in creating
the built form of the city. Yet in the last four decades of the 20th Century
and continuing on today, they have given up much of their authority, especially
in Canada and the USA, to Urban Planners, Politicians, Design Committees, Civil
Engineers, Urban Activists, Community Associations, Environmentalists,
Transportation Engineers, Zoners, Master Planners, Developers, Contractors,
Landscape Architects and others. The result has been endless suburbia,
mono-cultured suburbs, over specialization of uses, segregation of uses, gated
communities, industrial 'parks', a huge increase in the need for car trips and
car ownership, deserted central cities after dark, segregation of people based
on income and other factors, collector streets and freeways with average speeds
less than walking speed and much more besides.
Great cities tend to be
walkabout types of places where the pedestrian is important and where the
mixing together of uses and people is encouraged-thus is synergy created and a
sense of place afforded. To create great places that are both environmentally
and economically sustainable, where children and others are not penalized
because they don't drive or have access to a car, a place where mixed use is
tolerated and people can live, work and play in cities that aren't
dysfunctional-- livable cities instead, we need to educate
the Architecture profession to seize back control over the design of our
cities.
To do that, Architects and
Developers both must better understand the fundamental processes at work in
creating the built form of our environment today-they need to understand the
enterprise of the city, how and why cities form and grow and what pressure
groups are involving themselves in determining the shape and form of our
cities.
There has been tremendous
growth of interest in designing new places that are sustainable and interesting
and human scale. Authors such as James Howard Kuntsler in Home from Nowhere have come from outside the established
urban-related professions (from Journalism to be more precise) to describe the
woeful state of urban design and practice. Neo Urbanism is a movement of
sympathetic professionals who have come to understand first what we are doing
wrong and second in coming up with prescriptions for building better, more
sustainable cities. And Jane Jacobs has said that Neo Urbanists will win.
Course
Objectives
1. To understand the economic, technological, environmental and political
forces that have created or are creating the built form of the environment,
from the end of 19th Century to the beginning of the 21st Century, at both a
micro (individual building or project) level and macro level (urban agglomeration);
2. To explore the beginnings of the neo urbanist movement and understand the
implications for urban design and the Architecture profession today;
3. To examine the catalysts that lead to higher levels of economic and
environmental sustainability for cities;
4. To gauge community support or opposition to neo urbanist solutions;
5. To measure the impacts of public policy such as master planning, zoning and
other regulatory regimes on urban form and design and the sustainability of cities;
6. To analyze at the micro level the development of individual sites including
the due diligence process, applying the highest and best land use principal, setting
return on investment criteria, determining rates of return and understanding project
financing.
http://www.dramatispersonae.org/EnterpriseOfTheCity/HomePage/EnterpriseOfTheCityFrontPage.htm