Schedule
Schedule
Thursday, January 24
First day of class.
Tuesday, January 29
The problems in cities: the "urban crisis."
Readings:
John F. Kain, "The Distribution and Movement of Jobs and Industry." In The Metropolitan Enigma, edited by J.Q. Wilson (Harvard Univ. Press, 1968), 2-39.
David Wilson, The Rise of the Global Ghetto." In Cities and Race (Routledge, 2006), 19-48.
William J. Wilson, "Ghetto-Related Behavior and the Structure of Opportunity." In When Work Disappears (Knopf, 1997), 51-86.
United States: Urban/Rural and Inside/Outside Metropolitan Area, 2000
America's 20 biggest cities, 1950-2000
The urban crisis in Poughkeepsie
Thursday, January 31
The problem of the city: conceptualizing the urban.
Readings:
Lewis Mumford, "What is a City?" (1938).
Robert A. Beauregard, "Voices of Decline" (1993). In Readings in Urban Theory, edited by S. Fainstein and S. Campbell (Blackwell, 1996), 363-91.
Marshall Berman, "Introduction." In New York Calling, edited by M. Berman and B. Berger (Reaktion Books, 2007), 9-38.
Recommended:
Charles N. Glaab and A. Theodore Brown, "The City in American Thought: 1790-1850." In A History of Urban America (Macmillan, 1967), 53-81.
Robert Hunter, "Poverty and the Immigrant" (1912). In The American City, edited by A.L. Strauss (Aldine, 1968), 141-47.
This weekend, post to Blackboard: Discussion Board on the question, "How is the 'city in your head' influenced by broader ideas of the urban?"
Reforming the city: urban planning.
Readings:
Richard E. Klosterman, "Arguments For and Against Planning" (1985). In Readings in Planning Theory, edited by Scott Campbell and Susan S. Fainstein (Blackwell, 2003), 86-101.
James C. Scott, "Authoritarian High Modernism" (1998). In Readings in Planning Theory, edited by Scott Campbell and Susan S. Fainstein (Blackwell, 2003), 125-41.
Herbert Gans, "City Planning in America: A Sociological Analysis." In People and Plans (Basic Books, 1968), 57-77.
Recommended:
Simon Richards, "The Antisocial Urbanism of Le Corbusier." The Urban Re/Inventors 2 (2007).
Thursday, February 7
In-class essay exam.
Before class:
Watch "The City" (1939, dir. Ralph Steiner & Willard Van Dyke).
[View Part 1 and Part 2 online, or check out the videocassette from the Vassar library.]
POLITICAL ECONOMY: LEONARD NEVAREZ
Tuesday, February 12
Whose city?
Readings:
George Will, untitled Boston Globe op-ed column, April 23, 1995.
Richard G. Lipsey et al., "What Markets Do" (1990).
Logan & Molotch, Urban Fortunes, chaps. 1, 2, and 4.
Thursday, February 14
The urban growth machine.
Readings:
Logan & Molotch, Urban Fortunes, chaps. 3 and 5.
Tuesday, February 19
Group role-play exercise:
capital investment and the growth machine.Readings:
Logan & Molotch, Urban Fortunes, "Preface to the 20th Anniversary Edition," particularly pp. xxii-xxiii ("criteria for how to judge an urban project").
New Rochelle, NY (Google Maps)
City of Poughkeepsie, NY (Wikipedia)
City of Poughkeepsie, NY (Google Maps)
Pataki Proposing a Hudson River Research Institute (New York Times, January 3, 2000).
Upscale retailers coming to Town Center (Florida Times-Union, December 11, 2003).
Six Flags Plans to Build a 200-Acre Theme Park Near Foxwoods Casino (New York Times, July 10, 1996).
Thursday, February 21
Due at beginning of class: 2-3 page brief on group exercise.
The just city.
Readings:
Susan Fainstein, "New Directions in Planning Theory." Urban Affairs Review 35 (2000): 451-78.
Urban talk : Monday, February 25 in Rockefeller 200
"What's happening in New York's neighborhoods? (And how does Joe know?)"
Joseph Berger, New York Times reporter and author of The World in a City: Traveling the Globe through the Neighborhoods of the New New York.
ECONOMICS: TIMOTHY KOECHLIN
Tuesday, February 26
How economists think, and inequality across space.
Readings:
Revisit Richard G. Lipsey et al., "What Markets Do" (1990).
David Gordon, “Left, Right and Center: An Introduction to Political Economy,” pp. 17-20.
Paul Krugman, "The Death of Horatio Alger" (The Nation, January 4, 2004).
Peter Dreier, John Mollenkopf and Todd Swanstrom, Place Matters (Univ. Press of Kansas, 2001), 1-4, 17-36, and 103-123.
Thursday, February 28
Boomburbs and inequality.
Readings:
Lang and McFurgy, Boomburbs, Chap. 1 and pp. 22-23, 31-32, 55-61, 69-74, 75-83, 121-126, 157-161, and 172-174. Also, Tables 2-1, 2-2, and 2-3. Finally, check out the photos.
Eyal Press, "The New Suburban Poverty" (The Nation, April 23, 2007).
The sub-prime mortgage crisis and its fall-out.
Readings:
Paul Krugman, "Catastrophe Foretold" (New York Times, October 26, 2007).
John Cassady, "The Minksy Moment" (The New Yorker, February 4, 2008).
"Foreclosures in Black and White" (Editorial Board, New York Times, October 26, 2007).
Steve Berger, "The Subprime Mortgage 'Crisis' Will Fix Itself" (Mises Institute, April 30, 2007).
John Leland, "Baltimore Finds that Subprime Crisis Snags Women" (New York Times, January 15, 2008).
Thursday, March 6
Take-home essay exam handed out, due in 24 hours.
SPRING BREAK: MARCH 9-22
Read Goldberger's Up From Zero over the break.
ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY : NICHOLAS ADAMS
Tuesday, March 25
Lower Manhattan and the World Trade Center.
Readings:
Leonard I. Ruchelman, "Policy Formation." In The World Trade Center: Politics and Policies of Skyscraper Development (Syracuse Univ. Press, 1977), 18-55.
Thursday, March 27
The planning process after 9/11.
Readings:
Goldberger, Up From Zero.
Urban Talk: Thursday, March 27, 5 pm
Planning the World Trade Center Redevelopment: A Conversation with Andrew Winters.
The first event in the "Redeveloping the World Trade Center" series organized by the Urban Studies Program. College lecture at Students Building, 2nd floor.
The World Trade Center today and tomorrow.
Readings:
Thursday, April 3
Discussion and fieldtrip preparation.
Urban Talk: Thursday, April 3, 5 pm
Architecture, Media, and Policy Issues in the World Trade Center Redevelopment: A Faculty Panel.
Hillary Ballon (NYU University), Lisa Brawley (Urban Studies Program), and Brian Godfrey (Geography Department).
The second event in the "Redeveloping the World Trade Center" series organized by the Urban Studies Program. College lecture at Rockefeller Hall 200.
Class fieldtrip: Friday, April 4
Construction and Dialogue on the Ground: A Classroom Visit to the World Trade Center Redevelopment Site.
The third event in the "Redeveloping the World Trade Center" series organized by the Urban Studies Program.
Board buses outside Main Circle by 8 am; we return to Vassar by 5 pm.
Tuesday, April 8
In class essay. Bring to class a 5-8 page account of the conflict over the World Trade Center redevelopment.
CULTURAL HISTORY: LYDIA MURDOCH
Thursday, April 10
The growth of the industrial city.
Readings:
Friedrich Engels, "The Great Towns." In The Condition of the Working Class in England (Penguin Books 1987 [1845]), pp. 68-110.
Tuesday, April 15
State power and 19th-century urban reform movements.
Readings:
Anthony S. Wohl, "Fever! Fever!" In Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain (Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 117-141, 372-377.
Prashant Kidambi, "'A Disease of Locality': Plague and the Crisis of 'Sanitary Order.'" Chapter 3 in The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890-1920 (Ashgate, 2007), 49-70.
Thursday, April 17
Gender and the Late-Victorian city.
Readings:
Ellen Ross (ed.), "Introduction: Adventures Among the Poor," "A Lady Resident (1889)," "Annie Besant, 'White Slavery in London' (1888)," "Margaret Harkness, 'Barmaids' (1889)," and "Olive Christian Malvery, 'Gilding the Gutter' (1905)." In Slum Travelers: Ladies and London Poverty, 1860-1920 (University of California Press, 2007), front map and 1-39, 40-44, 45-51, 89-96, 136-147.
Tuesday, April 22
In-class essay exam.
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY & PLANNING: PINAR BATUR
Thursday, April 24
Urban, environment, and urban environment: is sustainability sustainable?
Readings:
Julian Agyeman and Tom Evans, "Toward Just Sustainability in Urban Communities: Building Equity Rights with Sustainable Solutions." Annals of the AAPSS 509 (2003): 35-53.
Alexander R. Cuthbert, "Environment." In The Form of Cities: Political Economy and Urban Design (Blackwell, 2006), 150-168.
Brendon Gleeson and Nicholas Low, "Cities as Consumers of the World's Environment." In Consuming Cities: The Urban Environment in the Global Economy after rthe Rio Declaration (Routledge, 2000), 1-29.
Timothy Luke, "A Rough Road Out of Rio." In Consuming Cities: The Urban Environment in the Global Economy after the Rio Declaration (Routledge, 2000), 55-67.
Tuesday, April 29
Planning big, planning small: are New York City and Vassar College sustainble?
Readings:
City of New York, Plan NYC: A Greener, Greater NY (City of New York, 2007), 3-39, 101-55.
Brian Farkas, "Colleges share institutional information." The Misc, November 16, 2007.
Brian Farkas, "Vassar gets a 'B' on sustainability." The Misc, February 8, 2007.
Sustainable Endowments Institute, "Vassar College." In College Sustainability Report Card 2008.
Brownfields and the future of urban environment: a real test case!
Readings:
City of New York, Plan NYC: A Greener, Greater NY (City of New York, 2007), 41-49. [NOTE: READ ONLY PP. 41-49!]
Jeff Millet, "More Polluted than Ever." The Record, October 2007.
Norman Walzer, Gisele F. Hamm and Lori A. Sutton. "Involving brownfields in community development: preliminary findings." Community Development: Journal of the Community Development Society 37.1 (Spring 2006): 79-89.
Tuesday, May 6
Group debate on urban policy-making:
if they call you from Washington and ask you to be in charge of HUD after the next elections...Bring to class 2-3 page brief on presidential candidates' HUD platforms (assigned in previous class).
Wednesday, May 14
Final paper due: your Urban Studies manifesto.