CITY PLANNING AND DESIGN - BUILDING GREAT COMMUNITIES
Course Materials
Videos, assignments, presentations, supplemental readings, links to other web sites, sample papers, etc.
Required Book
Hirt, Sonia A.. Zoned in the USA - The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation. 2015 Cornell University Press $9.00-$30.00
Available from Cornell University Press, or from Quail Ridge Books, or in e-book format from a variety of sites OTHER OPTIONAL BOOKS: Martin, Justin. Genius of Place – The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted, Abolitionist, Conservationist and Designer of Central Park 2011 DaCapo Press $13.00-$20.00 Available at Quail Ridge Books and from a variety of other online sources Glaeser, Edward. Triumph of the City – How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier 2011 Penguin Press $12.00-$20.00 Available online Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities 1961 Vintage Books $12.00-$18.00 Available online 
|
The histories of both the professions of landscape architecture and city planning start separately in traditions of garden design and city design, come together at a unique moment in American history in the person of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., and then both diverge and converge throughout the 20th century as landscape architecture and city planning. The management of cities is a diverse business across the world. In this graduate seminar in the Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning program at NC State University, we will concentrate on the American cultural backdrop and the American method of organizing and managing our urban environment, and will touch on the contrasts of the tools and processes of American city planning with that in the rest of the world.
This class is intended to provide understanding of the common genesis of both city planning and landscape architecture and the ebbs and flows of the two parallel evolutionary paths in the Twentieth Century, and explore the relationship of the design professions to the design of cities in the future. We will discuss the tools of planning in the contemporary world - techniques like zoning, comprehensive planning, environmental and resiliency planning, tactical urbanism, form-based codes and the legal underpinning of land use planning in the US. In a world where more than 50% of all humans now live in an urban area, we will explore a 21st Century future where cities continue to expand and make up an ever-larger proportion of the global economy. What will these places be like, and what are the roles of the design professions in building the shared landscape – the public realm – on our urban planet? 
Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. is generally regarded as the founder of two professions - city planning and landscape architecture.
American city planning as a profession began with people working to craft a response to the Industrial Revolution and the sudden explosion of urbanism across the developing world that was its result. This Progressive-era goal to make life better for people of varying social strata in this changing landscape characterized what was essentially one profession until the 1920's. At this point city planning as a profession began to become more engaged with the mechanisms and legal structure of city-building, as landscape architects continued the tradition of design of public infrastructure, parks and parkways.
Post-WWII landscape architecture retained its focus on the power of public places to alter people's lives, but ceded in great measure to architects and planners the big picture visioning of the future city as a whole, as landscape architects concentrated on translating Modernism as an aesthetic movement into project landscapes and public places. Big picture, top-down planning for the city of the future imploded upon itself in the 1960's as Modernism proved to be a flawed theory for overall city form. Planning and landscape architecture once again conjoined paths in the 1970's in reaction to the environmental movement, when Ian McHarg articulated a regional vision for city planning based on a careful understanding of landscape and natural systems. Various movements within both professions since have brought us closer, and sometimes further apart in the interim. What role will design have in the creation of the future city, in the dramatically different context our society has created? What tools and processes do planners use to mold urban form? How do politics translate cultural attitudes toward urban planning and city form? What forces are at work, like the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, that will mold the 21st century city? How will landscape architecture respond to the challenge of city-building differently or the same as city planning? These and other questions are the subject of this course. | ||||
