This course will explore the mutual influences of ideas of nature, theories of city design and planning, and practices of urban design, construction, and management. We will investigate how natural processes shape urban landscapes (from the scale of street corner to region) and how to intervene strategically in those processes in order to achieve certain goals. We will examine cases of cities that adapted successfully to natural processes and those that did not. Students will then have the opportunity to research a case of their choice and to present their findings for discussion. The subject may be historical or an an example of contemporary theory and practice. Additional information is also available at Professor Spirn's class website.

After catastrophic flooding in New Orleans destroyed two hospitals, the Southeast Louisiana Veterans Health Care System is planning a replacement facility that will incorporate resilience against future extreme events.

Do you want to think about ways to help solve New Orleans' problems? CityScope is a project-based introduction to the contemporary city. “Problem solving in complex (urban) environments” is different than “solving complex problems.” As a member of a team, you will learn to assess scenarios for the purpose of formulating social, economic and design strategies to provide humane and sustainable solutions. A visit to New Orleans is planned for spring break 2007.

Do you want to think about ways to help solve New Orleans' problems? CityScope is a project-based introduction to the contemporary city. "Problem solving in complex (urban) environments" is different than "solving complex problems." As a member of a team, you will learn to assess scenarios for the purpose of formulating social, economic and design strategies to provide humane and sustainable solutions. A visit to New Orleans is planned for spring break 2007.

City to City, as a class, will jump into the complexity of planning in New Orleans, a post-disaster city. City-to-City will ask how a post-disaster city grapple with its ideas of identity, what it is, who it represents, and how it projects its sense of self to residences, businesses, tourists, and to the outside world. In considering its people, how do city planners think about who lives where and why? At the same time, how can city planners celebrate a city's history and its culture and how can these elements be woven into reconstruction? Students will travel from Cambridge to New Orleans over Spring Break to meet and consult with their alumni clients, and continue to work on projects.

In this lesson, djembefola Weedie Braimah will introduce students to the cultural traditions of drumming in Congo Square. Students will collaboratively plan and design a community “Square” that represents a collective cultural space.

- Discuss the western African music traditions of Congo Square in New Orleans.
- Describe the essence and purpose of Congo Square.
- Examine personal, social, and cultural identities.
- Identify personal, social, and cultural traditions.
- Design a common cultural community space for expressing music, history, and culture.
- Present cultural community space concepts to an audience.

Preservation Hall Lessons is designed for all K-12 teachers or educational professionals that want to foster the culture and history of New Orleans music genres. The lessons can be integrated into general content areas like Language Arts, Math, Social Studies, and Science, or beginning to advanced Music Education studies.

An illustrated anti-Whig broadside, designed to combat the "Log Cabin campaign" tactics of presidential candidate William Henry Harrison. The text warns the people of New Orleans of Whig election propaganda: "People of Louisiana, above you have an accurate representation of the federal "Log-Cabin" Trap, invented by the "bank-parlor, Ruffle-shirt, silk-stocking" Gentry, for catching the "votes" of the industrious and laboring classes, of our citizens, of both town and country. . . . The "log cabin" is raised to blind you with the belief, that they are your friends . . ." The author then goes on to describe Whig campaign techniques as relying on deception, alcohol, and visual enticements, and as an "appeal to [the people's] passions, with mockeries, humbugs, shows, and parades. . . ." In the illustration a man sucks at a barrel of "Hard Cider" linked by a trip-rod to a precariously tilted log cabin. Above is the "Federal Bank Whig Motto. We Stoop to Conquer."|Title appears as it is written on the item.|Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1840-24.

This class is designed to expose you to the cycles of disasters, the roots of emergency planning in the U.S., how to understand and map vulnerabilities, and expose you to the disaster planning in different contexts, including in developing countries.

This transcribed article from American Radio Works discusses the hurricane risk in New Orleans. The 2002 article talks about how deep flood waters would be in a Category Five hurricane and the likelihood that such a storm would hit. Users may also listen to the article using Real Player audio program.

Students learn what causes hurricanes and what engineers do to help protect people from destruction caused by hurricane winds and rain. Research and data collection vessels allow for scientists and engineers to model and predict weather patterns and provide forecasts and storm warnings to the public. Engineers are also involved in the design and building of flood-prevention systems, such as levees and floodwalls. During the 2005 hurricane season, levees failed in the greater New Orleans area, contributing to the vast flooding and destruction of the historic city. In the associated activity, students learn how levees work, and they build their own levees and put them to the test!

In the wake of Katrina the entire gulf coast is embroiled in a struggle over what constitutes "appropriate" rebuilding and redevelopment efforts. This practicum will engage students in a set of work groups designed to assist local community based institutions and people in shaping the policy and practices that will guide the redevelopment and rebuilding efforts in the city of New Orleans.

Another satire on the Panic of 1837, again condemning Van Buren's continuation of predecessor Andrew Jackson's hard-money policies as the source of the crisis. Clay shows the president haunted by the ghost of Commerce, which is seated at the far right end of a table which he shares with a southern planter (far left) and a New York City Tammany Democrat. Commerce has been strangled by the Specie Circular, an extremely unpopular order issued by the Jackson administration in December 1836, requiring collectors of public revenues to accept only gold or silver (i.e., "specie") in payment for public lands. The ghost displays a sheaf of papers, including one marked "Repeal of the Specie Circular," and notices of bank failures in New Orleans, Philadelphia, and New York. Van Buren recoils at the sight of the specter, exclaiming, "Never shake thy gory locks at me, thou can'st not say I did it." Jackson, in a bonnet and dress made of bunting, turns away saying, "Never mind him gentlemen, the creature's scared, and has some conscience left; but by the Eternal we must shake that out of him." Planter (a note reading "Cotton Planters Specie in "Purse." Alabama" protrudes from his pocket): "No credit. Huzza!!" Tammany Irishman (raising a glass): "Down with the Bank!!"|Printed & pubd. by H.R. Robinson, 52 Cortlandt Street, N. York.|Signed with monogram: C (Edward Williams Clay).|Title appears as it is written on the item.|Century, p. 48.|Davison, no. 92.|Hess and Kaplan, p. 202.|Weitenkampf, p. 49.|Forms part of: American cartoon print filing series (Library of Congress)|Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1837-7.

A portrayal of the nocturnal raid on the Charleston post office by a mob of citizens and the burning of abolitionist mails found there in July 1835. Mail sacks are handed through a forced window of the ransacked post office, torn open and bundles of newspapers such as "The Liberator," the Boston "Atlas" and "Commercial Gazette" removed and strewn about. At left, in an open square before a church, a crowd surrounds a bonfire. A sign reading "$20,000 Reward for Tappan" hangs on the wall of the post office, referring to the bounty placed by the city of New Orleans on the head of Arthur Tappan, founder and president of the American Anti-Slavery Society.|The Library's impression of "New Method of Assorting the Mail" was printed on the same sheet as another abolitionist print, "Southern Ideas of Liberty" (no. 1835-3), and may have been part of a series with that title.|Title appears as it is written on the item.|Weitenkampf, p. 38.|Forms part of: American cartoon print filing series (Library of Congress)|Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1835-2.

Students design and build their own model levees. Acting as engineers for their city, teams create sturdy barriers to prevent water from flooding a city in the event of a hurricane.

This course focuses on the physical and economic renewal of urban neighborhood Main Streets by combining classroom work with an applied class project. The course content covers four broad areas:

An overview of the causes for urban business district decline, the challenges faced in revitalization and the type of revitalization strategies employed;
The physical and economic development planning tools used to understand and assess urban Main Streets from physical design and economic development perspectives;
The policies, interventions, and investments used to foster urban commercial revitalization; and
The formulation of a revitalization plan for an urban commercial district.

A parody of Democratic efforts to reelect incumbent Martin Van Buren in the face of broad popular support for Whig candidate William Henry Harrison. The print is a crude woodcut evidently based on Napoleon Sarony's "The New Era Whig Trap Sprung" (no. 1840-43), but differing in some details. The woodcut version includes on the cabin names of only eleven states (as opposed to twenty-one in the Sarony version), and omits the mound of clay and the eagle on the chimney. In addition the bale used as a fulcrum for Jackson's lever is labeled (probably in error) "N G" instead of "New-Orleans." Four other similarly primitive but bold woodcut campaign satires apparently by the same artist as "The Trap Sprung!," are also listed here. Three of them were issued from the same address, 104 Nassau Street (nos. 1840-26, -27, and -28). The fourth, "Uncle Sam's Pet Pups!"" (no. 1840-29) is clearly by the same artist, although published under Robert Elton's imprint.|Sold By Huestis & Co. 104 Nassau-St. N.Y.|Title appears as it is written on the item.|Weitenkampf, p. 67.|Forms part of: American cartoon print filing series (Library of Congress)|Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1840-25.

A satire attributing the dire fiscal straits of the nation to Andrew Jackson's banking policies, with specific reference to recent bank failures in New Orleans, New York, and Philadelphia. The artist blames the 1837 panic on Jackson's and later Van Buren's efforts to limit currency and emphasize specie (or coinage) as the circulating medium in the American economy. Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton's role as an ally of the administration and champion of coinage (in the cartoonist's parlance "mint drops") is also attacked. In an eighteenth-century sickroom scene Uncle Sam, wearing a liberty cap, a stars-and-stripes dressing gown, and moccasins, slumps in a chair. In his hand is a paper reading "Failures / New Orleans right Nicholas Biddle arrives, with a trunk of "Post Notes" and "Bonds," and is greeted by Brother Jonathan. Jonathan: "Oh Docr. Biddle I'm so glad you're come. Uncle Sam's in a darned bad way . . ." Biddle: "I'll try what I can do . . . & I've sent to Dr. John Bull for his assistance." The print is dated 1834 by Weitenkampf, but it must have appeared after Van Buren's victory in the 1836 presidential election, given Uncle Sam's remark, "You are to nurse me now Aunt Matty." Nancy Davison's date of 1837 is more credible. Most likely it was issued during the spring of that year, after the collapse of the cotton market and several banks in New Orleans and the subsequent failure of many New York banks in March. In April Nicholas Biddle's Pennsylvania state bank came to the aid of the ailing banking community by buying up considerable numbers of bonds and notes.|Printed & published by H.R. Robinson 52, Cortlandt Street, New York.|Signed with monogram: C (Edward Williams Clay).|Title appears as it is written on the item.|Davison, no. 102.|Helfand, p. 11.|Murrell, p. 132.|Weitenkampf, p. 36.|Forms part of: American cartoon print filing series (Library of Congress)|Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1837-6.

This semester, we will read writing about travel and place from Columbus's Diario through the present. Travel writing has some special features that will shape both the content and the work for this subject: reflecting the point of view, narrative choices, and style of individuals, it also responds to the pressures of a real world only marginally under their control. Whether the traveler is a curious tourist, the leader of a national expedition, or a starving, half-naked survivor, the encounter with place shapes what travel writing can be. Accordingly, we will pay attention not only to narrative texts but to maps, objects, archives, and facts of various kinds.
Our materials are organized around three regions: North America, Africa and the Atlantic world, the Arctic and Antarctic. The historical scope of these readings will allow us to know something not only about the experiences and writing strategies of individual travelers, but about the progressive integration of these regions into global economic, political, and knowledge systems. Whether we are looking at the production of an Inuit film for global audiences, or the mapping of a route across the North American continent by water, these materials do more than simply record or narrate experiences and territories: they also participate in shaping the world and what it means to us.
Authors will include Olaudah Equiano, Caryl Philips, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Joseph Conrad, Jamaica Kincaid, William Least Heat Moon, Louise Erdrich, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.
Expeditions will include those of Lewis and Clark (North America), Henry Morton Stanley (Africa), Ernest Shackleton and Robert F. Scott (Antarctica).