EDAD711 Making Cities Work 3cr

What design decisions lead to a more sustainable future and how are those decisions made? The space between buildings-a city’s parks, urban gardens and greenways, and infrastructures of water, transportation, and communication are integral to the making of the urban places we inhabit. In this course we examine how the architecture and design of cities is dependent on the underlying urban fabric by looking carefully at the forces that shape great urban spaces - the designers, the political players and the everyday urban dwellers. Contemporary projects ranging from The High Line in Manhattan to Germany’s
Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord are used as case-studies in conjunction with study of Boston’s historical and contemporary urban landscape. Students’ final projects for the course involve direct observation, analysis, and documentation of selected sites in Boston. Through the case studies and investigations in Boston, we critically assess the social, cultural, environmental, and economic factors that influence built and landscape fabric of cities and what the confluence of those underpinnings means for the future of the places where we live.