Landscape Urbanization

In the second half of the twentieth century a global restructuring of the industrial economy and the construction of new infrastructures of mobility, communication, and exchange realigned patterns of urbanization across North America. The neo-industrial economic environment and its supporting infrastructures, and the new social relations they afford, also have the consequence of producing built environments. These environments are hardly recognizable as city forms. In this sense, these places might be best understood as landscapes. These landscapes, the new space of neo-liberal neo-industrial capital, where most North Americans live and work, are the subject of this course.As America rapidly deindustrializes, it is simultaneously urbanizing faster than at any other time in modern history. The result is an abundance of new landscapes within urbanized regions that eternally elude the overly controlled parameters and the scripted programming elements that designers are charged with creating and accommodating in their projects. This course chronicles this condition and emphasizes that those with an understanding of both landscape and urbanization will be best positioned to act on these sites in the future.