This is a seminar course that explores the history of selected features of the physical environment of urban America. Among the features considered are parks, cemeteries, tenements, suburbs, zoos, skyscrapers, department stores, supermarkets, and amusement parks. The course gives students experience in working with primary documentation sources through its selection of readings and class discussions. Students then have the opportunity to apply this experience by researching their own historical questions and writing a term paper.

This seminar focuses on downtowns in U.S. cities from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. Emphasis will be placed on downtown as an idea, place, and cluster of interests; on the changing character of downtown; and on recent efforts to rebuild it. Subjects to be considered will include subways, skyscrapers, highways, urban renewal, and retail centers. The focus will be on readings, discussions, and individual research projects.

Kevin Lynch’s landmark volume, The Image of the City (1960), emphasized the perceptual characteristics of the urban environment, stressing the ways that individuals mentally organize their own sensory experience of cities. Increasingly, however, city imaging is supplemented and constructed by exposure to visual media, rather than by direct sense experience of urban realms. City images are not static, but subject to constant revision and manipulation by a variety of media-savvy individuals and institutions. In recent years, urban designers (and others) have used the idea of city image proactively – seeking innovative ways to alter perceptions of urban, suburban, and regional areas. City imaging, in this sense, is the process of constructing visually-based narratives about the potential of places.

Advanced-level students will examine photographs depicting suburban development; conduct independent research on land use; and design a plan for a utopian, environmentally-friendly housing development in their city.

This lesson is for advanced learners who study Built Environment ( Urbanism)  and need to learn English for specific Purposes (ESP). The lesson focuses on 3 skills ( reading/speaking/writing) and also makes the learners familiarise to the vocabulary dedicated to New Urbanism register.The pre-reading tasks make the learners get ready to the text through brainstorming and definition tasks. They are supposed to work in groups and pairs and give feedback to the whole class in an interactive way.The reading tasks allow the learners to read the text and get the necessary information to answer the questions either in pairs or groups. The post reading task is a writing task that makes the learners describe the phenomenon of the sprawl in their country/city and get involved in suggesting some solutions. ( pair work)

This course covers theories about the form that settlements should take and attempts a distinction between descriptive and normative theory by examining examples of various theories of city form over time. Case studies will highlight the origins of the modern city and theories about its emerging form, including the transformation of the nineteenth-century city and its organization. Through examples and historical context, current issues of city form in relation to city-making, social structure, and physical design will also be discussed and analyzed.