History 755: MODERN CITIES AND URBANISM
Wednesdays, 5-7:30
Professor Jordan Sand (sandj@georgetown.edu / ICC 611)
This course approaches the subject of the modern city comparatively and thematically. It is the graduate version of a course I have taught for several years to a mix of graduate students and undergraduates. To address the needs of graduate students in particular, I have added some classic theoretical works and writing on major themes in urban history to this syllabus.
Each student will focus on the study of one city. Class session will be divided between discussion of readings and short student presentations about the cities you are studying. You will be asked to submit three short reports tied to your presentations, with data, analysis, and bibliography on your cities, followed by revised reports for publication on the web and a final research paper that expands on some or all of your reports.
The scholarly literature on the modern city is very broad. Most urban history, particularly work written in English, has tended to focus on Europe and North America and has relied on Eurocentric assumptions about the nature of modernity. Urban historians have treated the city as a bounded and readable entity. They have focused on the influence of planners and planning, whether as progressive or as destructive forces. Many cities outside Europe and America don’t fit this approach well.
Meanwhile, a new sociological literature has emerged since the late twentieth century on “megacities,” “global cities,” the “information city” and even the “death of the city.” This writing sets the problem of urbanism in a truly global frame for the first time. But it tends to assume that the urban phenomena becoming visible at present are new and anomalous. It therefore lacks longer historical perspective. Is the historical break in the history of cities as complete as the gap between these two literatures would lead us to believe? This course will draw from both of these literatures as well as from our own investigations to see if the history of urban modernity might be structured differently.
Themes have been chosen with three things in mind:
- The focus is historical. Although this course does not trace a singular process of urban development, each segment will draw upon historical cases to understand the issues with us in cities today from a broader perspective.
- The focus is on the material and spatial aspects of the city, or the expression of social issues in material and spatial form.
- One of our central questions will be: what kind of urban history can we construct without assuming the perspective of Euro-American urban sociology and planning history? The readings therefore mix a substantial amount of material from Japan (my area of specialization), China, and elsewhere. But the particular regions are less important for our purposes than the material these studies provide for thinking about modern urbanism generally.
Overview of Assignments
Under each session title, I have three headings: Topic, Readings, and Questions. The Topic represents what was on my mind when I chose the readings and why they are included in the course. This is just to start you thinking. The Readings are generally required of everyone, although there are a few I may make optional or distribute to volunteers. The Questions are intended to help you frame your own research.
You must choose a city about which scholarly writing is available. This is crucial: in order to complete the assignments, you must be able to find academic books and articles written in a language you can read that discuss the history of your city in relation to several of the session themes in this syllabus.
Part of each class will be devoted to short briefings and brainstorming about your findings on each of your cities related to the themes of the week. The main purpose of these briefings is to pool knowledge and ideas. The idea is to finish the required reading for the week, then do a quick exploration to see what you can find in relation to your city. You may have to diverge somewhat from the theme and think creatively to turn up materials. Keep these initial investigations contained—give yourself a fixed amount of time and see what you can come up with. Time permitting, in class I will ask you to show whatever sources you have found and offer a few preliminary thoughts about them.
Based on these brief studies, you will pick three themes and write short reports (1000-1500 words plus a bibliography containing at least five items) for submission. Short reports should be submitted by the Friday of the week after we have discussed the theme in class.
At the end of the semester, you will submit revised reports for publication open-access on the web.
Rough grading breakdown:
General participation and research briefings: 30%
3 short reports plus final revisions: 35%
Final paper: 35%
Report Submission and Grading: Reports should be submitted as Word files. I will consider class presentation materials together with your writing in evaluating the reports, but the report grade will be based primarily on the write-up. No extra points will be earned for powerpoints with unnecessary bells and whistles. Your time is better spent gathering sources, reading, and taking notes.
Report format: I will be providing a simple template in Word for submission of written reports. Use this template or format your report to include the same information. Your bibliography should be annotated with a sentence or two per entry. When citing materials from the web, provide a webpage title and author, not just a url. If this information is not immediately evident, trace the page back to its source to identify it to the best of your ability.
Revisions: At the end of the semester, you will resubmit your reports, carefully checked for style as well as proper citation, illustrated, and ready for web publication. The revised versions can be any length, but need be no longer than the original report, provided they are significantly improved in substance and polished in exposition.
Grades for individual reports will be based first on the quality of the research and basic documentation. An effective synthesis of useful literature on a particular topic, cogently summarized and properly cited so that others can use the information, is more important in these short assignments than presenting an original thesis.
Final Papers: should be 3000-4000 words. The paper should be a research paper related to the history of your city. It will be graded as any research paper in history would be, on the basis of thesis, exposition, and documentation. There is no requirement that these papers draw on primary documents although you may incorporate them if good sources are available to you. A critical state-of-the-field survey of scholarship on a topic is also welcome. These papers should build on your findings in the course of researching for the short reports but should not repeat more than an occasional sentence from them.
Alternative to Final Paper: Major Revision of 3 Reports. Instead of submitting a final paper, you may choose to do substantial revisions to your three reviews. Follow my suggestions and go back to some of your sources and the databases. The revised version of each report should include at least two new sources not in the first submission and show new thinking in response to my comments and further research. They will be graded together in a way commensurate with the grades on final papers.
Grades will be applied roughly as follows:
A or A- = substantial coverage of a topic, effectively framed and succinctly summarized, completely documented.
B+ or B = Acceptable coverage, satisfactory framing, citations traceable if not as complete as they might be; or excellent in two of these respects but unsatisfactory in the third.
B- or C = Report relevant to topic, but inadequate in presentation and/or documentation.
D = Inadequate on all fronts.
F = Missing report.
Attendance: Since we meet only once a week, it is important to be present and ready to participate every week. If you cannot attend class because of illness, notify me by Wednesday at noon. If you must miss class for any other reason, give me notice well in advance with an explanation. Unexplained absences will damage your final grade.
Honor Code: Georgetown has a strict honor code. I am required to report any suspected violations. It will not be a matter we can negotiate privately. Don’t get yourself in a mess. If you have any questions about fair use and citation, contact me in advance of submitting your work. Or bring the topic up in class: navigating the subtleties of fair use is a key part of learning the craft of academic research and writing.
Honor Council website: http://honorcouncil.georgetown.edu/
Additionally, since we will be posting some of our work on the web, you must be doubly careful that you are using others’ work appropriately. Academics are inveterate vanity searchers. We don’t want to get complaints from anyone.
SCHEDULE
Session 1 (Sept.1) Introduction
Review of syllabus and course goals. Discussion of research methods and choices of cities to focus on; discussion of building a collective bibliography and pandemic investigations.
Preliminary assignment: look at last year’s class website. Come ready with a couple of candidates for cities you might work on. You can work on a city already on the site.
Session 2 (Sept. 8) The City as Ecosystem
Topic: Impact of the environment on settlement and city form; impact of the city on the environment. Resources and the boundaries of the urban region. Urban flora and fauna.
Readings:
Martin Melosi, “The Historical Dimension of Urban Ecology”
William Cronon, “Annihilating Space: Meat,” in Nature’s Metropolis
Ian Douglas, Robert Hodgson, Nigel Lawson, “Industry, Environment, and Health through 200 Years in Manchester”
Menno Schilthuizen, Darwin Comes to Town,Ch.8, “Urban Myths”
Questions: How would you characterize your city as an ecosystem? How has it been shaped by its environment, and how has it in turn affected its surroundings?
Session 3 (Sept. 15) The City as Ordered Universe
Topic: The grid, the urban master plan, the forms and uses of planned public space. Street grids seem like the perfect embodiment of modern rationality. Are they? What else do they signify?
Readings:
Joseph Rykwert, The Idea of a Town, 23-26, 41-65
Crouch and Mundigo, “The Laws of Indies”
Setha Low, “Cultural Meaning of the Plaza”
James Holston, “The Modernist City and the Death of the Street”
Questions: Does your city have a single overall plan? When was it made and with what aims? How much was realized? What remains of it today?
Session 4 (Sept. 22) The City Under Threat 1—War
Topic: War, terror, and aerial bombing.
Readings:
Lewis Mumford, The City in History, 356-371.
Fishman, Urban Utopias of the Twentieth Century, 165-187 (Le Corbusier)
Le Corbusier, The Radiant City
Kenneth Hewitt, “Place Annihilation”
Jeffrey M. Diefendorf, “Wartime Destruction and the Postwar Cityscape”
Questions: How has war affected the history of your city? Are its marks visible? Did your city once have walls? When did they go up, and when did they come down? Have the techniques of modern warfare—including terror, broadly defined—shaped the city or urban policy?
Session 5 (Sept. 29) The City Under Threat 2—Natural Disasters and Disease
Topic: Fire, flood and earthquake. Disease. As soon as people began to gather themselves in cities they put themselves at risk. One of the great challenges for the construction and management of cities has been protection against natural hazards. A proposed definition of the modern city: an attempt to create a zero-hazard environment. Yet it is obvious this has always failed.
Readings:
Susan Kuretsky, “Jan van der Heyden and the Origins of Modern Firefighting” (Amsterdam), in Flammable Cities
Greg Bankoff, “A Tale of Two Cities: the Pyro-Seismic Morphology of Nineteenth-Century Manila” (Manila), in Flammable Cities
Jordan Sand and Steve Wills, “Governance, Arson, and Firefighting in Edo,” in Flammable Cities
“Cholera in Nineteenth-Century New York” (http://www.virtualny.cuny.edu/cholera.html)
Questions: How has your city been affected by natural hazards or epidemic disease? What measures were taken to eliminate these problems or mitigate their effects, when? What side effects did those measures have?
Additional assignment: pandemic city snapshots.
Session 6 (Oct. 6) Squatter Cities, Peasant Cities, Megacities
Topic: These days, there is a dystopian vision of the world’s largest population concentrations, which sees them as chaotic, neglected, and inhumane—and there is a utopian vision of some of the same places that sees them as exciting, self-organizing human-technological systems. How do we assess these visions in particular places? What are their ideological bases? Can a longer historical view help us see beyond these polarized visions?
Readings:
Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, selections TBA
Video: “Lagos/Koolhaas”
Weinstein, The Durable Slum ch.1 (online via Lau)
*additional reading:
James Holston, “Autoconstruction in Working-Class Brazil”
Questions: Where do the poorest residents live in your city? How did they get there? Are there or were there in the past districts of housing built by the occupants themselves?
Session 7 (Oct. 13) The City as Ecosystem 2—Waste
Topic: Garbage, nightsoil, and other refuse—how modern cities transformed human products into waste and waste into usable products. A proposed definition of the city: a settlement that generates more waste than it can manage internally. Scavengers and the informal economy of waste and recycling.
Reading:
S. Barles, “Urban Metabolism and River Systems: An Historical Perspective,
Paris and the Seine, 1790-1970”
Shih-Yang Kao, “The City Recycled: The Afterlives of Demolished Buildings in Post-war Beijing” (PhD dissertation, Berkeley).
Martin Medina, The World’s Scavengers, vii-xi, 32-61, 183-197, 229-235
Questions: When was a sewer system built in your city, and what was the context? Where did it go? What role has landfill played in the development of your city?
Session 8 (Oct. 20) Technologies of Control and Comfort
Topic: Technologies we take for granted today, including streetlights and air conditioners, wrought revolutionary changes on cities, some serving social control, others private comfort. Now we confront the problem of their sustainability.
Reading:
Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night: “The Street,” “Night Life,” and “The Drawing Room”
Friedman, “The Air-Conditioned Century” (https://www.americanheritage.com/air-conditioned-century)
Stewart, “Why Should Urban Heat Island Researchers Study History?”
Session 9 (Oct. 27) The City as Real Estate
Topic: A proposed definition of the modern city: a settlement shaped by the needs of the real estate industry.
Readings:
Willis, Form Follows Finance, selections
Bhattacharyya, “Interwar Housing Speculation and Rent Profiteering in Colonial Calcutta”
You-Tien Hsing, The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China, selections
Questions: How have the location, size, and shape of architecture in your city been determined by municipal or state regulation? How have they been determined by the real estate market? How were the two related?
*additional topic: Real estate bubbles and how urban real estate markets sustain capitalism
*additional viewing: David Harvey interview on real estate bubbles; news reports on youtube about Chinese ghost cities.
Session 10 (Nov. 3) Cities and Colonialism
Topic: the role of cities and urban networks in colonial empires.
Reading:
Anthony King, Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power and Environment, Chapter 4
Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism, selections
Robert Lewis and Richard Harris, “Segregation and the Social Relations of Place, Bombay, 1890-1910”
Jordan Sand, “Imperial Cities as Cultural Nodes”
Questions: Where was your city situated historically in the era of colonial empires? Was it a colonial metropole, the capital city of a colony, or a site of colonial settlement? How is this history reflected in built form, or in structural relations with other cities?
Session 11 (Nov. 10) Streets, Crowds, and Anxious Modernity
Topic: Beginning in the late nineteenth century, a rich literature developed in Europe on the experience of the urban crowd. This literature reflects a new awareness of the psychological impact of city life. Some of the classic works of modernist fiction and film as well as social theory explore this theme.
Reading:
- Frisby, Cityscapes of Modernity, Ch.1 “The City Observed” (Canvas)
- Prestel, Emotional Cities: Debates on Urban Change in Berlin and Cairo, 1860-1910, chapter: “Streets of Excitement” (online via Lauinger)
- Silverberg, “Constructing the Japanese Ethnography of Modernity” (Canvas)
Primary sources:
- Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (online:
- https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=747)
- Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire” (Canvas)
- Kracauer, “Cult of Distraction” (Canvas)
Films:
- Vertov, “Man with a Movie Camera” (Youtube)
- Ruttmann, “Berlin: Symphony of a Great City” (Youtube)
Questions: How did modern writers, artists, or filmmakers document street life in your city? How did they define or express its modernity?
Session 12 (Nov. 17) The City as Data: Surveying Populations
Topic: The survey and the map. A proposed definition of the modern city: a city whose people are known to authorities through social statistics. Beginning in the 18th century, governments began to manage whole populations through statistical study of all aspects of everyday life. This new mode of what Michel Foucault calls “biopolitics” began in cities, with studies of factory workers’ health, and mapping of mortality, crime, and suicide. To almost every branch of government today, the city is first a population and a space with measurable traits. The origins of social statistics. Edwin Chadwick and the first cholera map.
Reading:
Bulmer, Bales and Sklar, “The Social Survey in Historical Perspective”
Hanley, “Edwin Chadwick and the Poverty of Statistics”
Questions: When did authorities begin collecting quantitative data about the population of your city? What did they measure? Can you find an example of an early survey of some social phenomenon? What does it tell us about population and governance?
Session 13 (Nov. 24): Thanksgiving Break
Session 14 (Dec.1) Global City Theory
Topic: theories of the global city have flourished since the 1980s. We will read a couple of the most widely cited scholars and consider how applicable their ideas are to the cities we study.
Reading
Castells, “Globalization, Networking, Urbanization”
Sassen, “Why Cities Matter” (essay for Venice Biennale 2006)
Machimura, “Symbolic Uses of Globalization”
Simone, “The Last Shall Be First,” in Andreas Huyssen ed., Other Cities, Other Worlds
FINAL PAPERS DUE LAST DAY OF EXAMS
