Reports
These short reports review some of the scholarly literature about each city in relation to course themes. The themes are listed with descriptions and class readings in the syllabus.
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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?
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The City in War
Topic: War, terror, and aerial bombing. City walls and fortification. How war has affected the history of the city and where its marks are visible.
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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.
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Squatter Cities and Megacities
Topic: Two opposing visions of the megacity: the dystopian, which sees it as chaotic, neglected, and inhumane; and the utopian, which sees it as an exciting, self-organizing, human-technological system. How do we assess these visions in particular places?
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Provisioning the City
Topic: Food. It’s remarkable if you think about it that in modern cities several million human beings can live in close proximity to one another, hardly any of them hunting, gathering, or farming any food at all, yet manage to get fed every day.
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Waste
Topic: Garbage, nightsoil, and other refuse—how modern cities transformed human products into waste and waste into usable products.
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The City as Social Body
Topic: Modern cities and the politics of the masses, the public square, and the public sphere. What do cities need public space for?
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The City as Real Estate
Topic: A proposed definition of the modern city: a settlement shaped by the needs of the real estate industry.
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Tourism and Urban Branding
Topic: Some scholars have called tourism the largest industry in the world. But what distinguishes tourism from older forms of travel, such as pilgrimage? And what shapes the image of a city in the global markets of travel and investment today?
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City Narratives
Topic: The city in the words of its occupants. Methods and issues in interview-based urban research. Marginal occupants and stories of displacement.
