Understanding the events and forces that shaped modern American cities is essential to the successful practice of urban design and planning in the twenty-first century. This course explores the growth, planning, and design of major North American cities from the early European settlements to the present. The object of the course is to use history to inform the thinking and practice of contemporary planners, policy makers, and designers. Its format consists of lectures, films, class discussions, and student presentations in which students explore urban topics of their own choosing.

The course examines the history of American urban form and society by analyzing specific plans, physical projects, and material conditions. Among the topics we investigate are the rise and fall of downtown; homes and housing; the landscaping of urban places; planned communities and civic spaces; revolutions in transportation; environmental threats and disasters; the assembly of urban infrastructure; racial and ethnic settlement patterns; slums and ghettos, so-called; bohemias and art districts; urban renewal and revitalization; gentrification; and suburbia in all its diversity.

In the course we will trace such themes as the tensions between formal planning and the informal “weave of small patterns;” public-private city-building (it began much earlier than you think it did); the contradictory contributions of the elite; the production of housing: elegant, affordable, and everything in-between; the checkered past of urban planning; and the surprising power of people to shape their environments.