Urban Design Politics, Spring 2003

Abstract: Examines ways urban design contributes to distribution of political power and resources in cities. Investigates the nature of relations between built form and political purposes through close study of a wide variety of situations where public sector design commissions and planning processes have been clearly motivated by political pressures. Lectures and discussions focus on specific case studies of twentieth-century government-sponsored designs carried out under diverse regimes in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. This is a seminar about the ways that urban design contributes to the distribution of political power and resources in cities. "Design," in this view, is not some value-neutral aesthetic applied to efforts at urban development but is, instead, an integral part of the motives driving that development. The class investigates the nature of the relations between built form and political purposes through close examination of a wide variety of situations where public and private sector design commissions and planning processes have been clearly motivated by political pressures, as well as situations where the political assumptions have remained more tacit. We will explore cases from both developed and developing countries.

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