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Sep6
Intro

Course Description
This is a reading seminar on urban theory, with an emphasis on urban intellectual history and critical social theory.  It is intended for both doctoral students and Masters students interested in deepening their theoretical understanding of cities, urbanization and spatial development.  Readings cover both classic texts in urban theory (including from Germany and the "Chicago School"), important late 20th Century writers (with an emphasis on David Harvey and Manuel Castells), and specific themes in urban theory (such as global cities and the "L.A. School"). The goal of the seminar is to understand not only the substance of the readings, but also the structure and development of their arguments.  This course is required for doctoral urban planning students. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the readings and topics, students from other degree programs outside urban planning are also encouraged to attend. (In past years, we have had students from sociology, architecture, history, anthropology, natural resources and political science.) This course will be taught every other year (2012, 2014, etc.), alternating with UP660 (Epistemology and Reasoning for Planning Research, taught fall 2013, 2015, etc.). Another theory course of interest is Prof. Grengs' UP575 (Metropolitan Structures).

Prerequisites
Doctoral student status or permission of instructor. Masters students in planning, design and architecture should take Urban Planning 540 (Planning Theory) -- or the equivalent -- before taking UP650. Please email me if you have questions or are interested in the course.

Required Readings
Readings will include several books, plus articles (via the course ctools site) and online books via ebrary. If you would like to get a head start on reading, I would suggest the David Harvey book (see below). Feel free to also browse the readings in the ctools site (resource section).

books (posted through the wolverineaccess textbook system): 3 required + 1 optional.
Harvey, David, Spaces of Capital Towards a Critical Geography (Blackwell/Wiley).
Lin and Mele (eds.), The Urban Sociology Reader (Routledge).
Castells, Manuel, The Castells Reader on cities and social theory (Blackwell/Wiley)
Parker, Simon, Urban Theory and the Urban Experience: Encountering the City (Routledge). [optional - a very useful, concise companion to urban theory]

plus one more text. Possibilities include:
Marshall, Stephen. 2009. Cities design and evolution. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge. Fainstein, Susan S. 2010. The Just City. Cornell University Press. Sennett, Richard. 1994. Flesh and stone : the body and the city in Western civilization. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton. Jacobs, Jane. 1969. The Economy of Cities. New York: Vintage Press.
see this timeline (pdf file) for an overview of selected course reading authors (and this timeline/chronology of urban planning history).

DRAFT SYLLABUS

• (if a reading is not listed from one of the four assigned texts, then the reading is located on ctools) -- readings subject to change, additions...

Sept 6

Introduction

Sept 13 - 20

Classic Readings in Urban Theory: the German and Chicago Schools, plus other foundational ideas

Sept. 13: German School
Engels, Friedrich. 1845. "The Great Towns", in Condition of the Working Class in England. (online reading)
Tonnies, Ferdinand. Community and Society, in Lin and Mele (eds.), The Urban Sociology Reader (Routledge). [German original via Hathi Trust: Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft] see also this ebrary online version.
Simmel, Georg. The Metropolis and Mental Life, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Weber, Max. 1958. The City. Translated by D. M. a. G. Neuwirth. New York: Free Press; 1st Collier Books edition. (chapter: "The Nature of Cities")
Frisby, David. 2001. Cityscapes of modernity : critical explorations. Cambridge ; Malden, MA: Polity Press in association with Blackwell. (Chapter 3: The City Interpreted: Georg Simmel's Metropolis)
Benjamin, Walter. 1969. "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility," in Illuminations. Edited and with an introduction by Hannah Arendt. Translated by Harry Zohn. New York,: Schocken Books. (originally published 1936).
Parker, Simon, Urban Theory and the Urban Experience: Encountering the City (Routledge). pp. 1-19.

see also:
Georg Simmel Online (in German and English)
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (Berlin – Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt) [film via archive.org)
Benjamin, Walter. 1968. Illuminations. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt [ebrary]


Sept. 20: Chicago School (Park, Burgess, Wirth) and beyond
Park, Robert, Human Ecology, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Burgess, Ernest, The Growth Of The City: An Introduction To A Research Project, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Wirth, Louis. 1938. Urbanism as a Way of Life, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Gans, Herbert, Urbanism and Suburbanism as Ways of Life: A Reevaluation of Definitions, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Fischer, Claude, Theories of Urbanism, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Mumford, Lewis. 1937. What is a city? Architectural Record LXXXII (November).
Saunders, Peter. "The Urban as an Ecological Community," in Social Theory and the Urban Question. London: Hutchinson & Co. 1981, pp. 48-79.
Parker, Simon, Urban Theory and the Urban Experience: Encountering the City (Routledge). Ch. 3.
Lynch, Kevin. 1974. The Pattern of the Metropolis. In An urban world, edited by C. Tilly. Boston,: Little Brown.

see also:
Park, Robert E. 1925. Suggestions for the Investigation of human Behavior in the Urban Environment. In The City, edited by R. E. Park, E. W. Burgess and R. D. MacKenzie. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sep 27 - Oct 4

David Harvey and a Geographical View of Capitalism
Harvey, David. 2001. Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography. Routledge.
Sep 27: Chs. 1-11
Oct. 4: Chs. 12-18
Parker, Simon, Urban Theory and the Urban Experience: Encountering the City (Routledge). Ch. 6.

see also:
Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey (with both video and audio links)
"A Brief History of Neoliberalism" (Audio of lecture by Harvey)
A 2004 Interview with David Harvey (audio, video, text)
Harvey, David. "Possible Urban Worlds" (Fourth Megacities Lecture, 2000)
Havid, David. Social Justice and the City (revised version). ebrary.
Harvey, David. 2007. Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press. [ebrary]

background on von Thünen:
Johann-Heinrich von Thünen: Balancing Land-Use Allocation with Transport Cost (by Scott Crosier)
Johann-Heinrich von Thünen (Resources) (Krumme, U. Washington)

Oct 11-18

Castells: from "the Urban Question" to the Internet
Castells, Manuel. 2002. The Castells Reader on cities and social theory: Blackwell.
Oct. 11: introduction; Chs. 1-5
Oct 18: Chs. 6 - 9

see also:
Interview with Manuel Castells, Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley (May 9, 2001)

Castells, Manuel. 2009. Power of Identity : Economy, Society, and Culture (2nd Edition). Wiley-Blackwell. [ebrary]

Oct 25

Henri Lefebvre and the Production of Space
Gottdiener, Mark. 1994. "Urban Ecology, Economics and Geography: Spatial Analysis in Transition " in The social production of urban space. 2nd ed. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Mark Gottdiener, A Marx for Our Time: Henri Lefèbvre and The Production of Space, in An Architektur – Produktion und Gebrauch gebauter Umwelt html
Stuart Elden, "There is a Politics of Space because Space is Political" (Henri Lefebvre and the Production of Space), in An Architektur – Produktion und Gebrauch gebauter Umwelt html
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The production of space. Oxford, UK ; Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell. "Plan of the Present Work"
Lefebvre, Henri Interviews: Writings on Cities (No Salvation away from the Centre? / The Urban in Question) 1996
Parker, Simon, Urban Theory and the Urban Experience, pp. 19-24.
Brenner, Neil. 2000. "The urban question as a scale question: reflections on Henri Lefebvre, urban theory and the politics of scale,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24, 2: 361-378 link

see also these books in ebrary:
Lefebvre, Henri. 2010. Everyday Life in the Modern World (2nd Edition). London: Continuum International Publishing.
Lefebvre, Henri. 2009. State, Space, World : Selected Essays. (edited by Stuart Elden and Neil Brenner). University of Minnesota Press.
Shields, Rob. 1998. LeFebvre, Love, and Struggle : Spatial Dialectics. Routledge.
Stanek, Lukasz. 2011. Henri Lefebvre on Space : Architecture, Urban Research, and the Production of Theory. University of Minnesota Press.
Gardiner, Michael. 2000. Critiques of Everyday Life : Introduction. Routledge.

OPTION: review the infuences of Lefebvre on Soja's Postmodern Geographies: the Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory) google book version

Nov 1

Global Cities (see class blog: "Visualizing the Global/National/Local")

read first:
John Friedmann, The World City Hypothesis, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Saskia Sassen, The Urban Impact of Economic Globalization, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Michael Peter Smith, Power in Place: Retheorizing the Local and the Global, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Dicken, Peter. 2004. Geographers and ‘globalization’: (yet) another missed boat? Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 29 (1):5-26.
King, Anthony. 1995. Re-presenting world Cities:  cultural theory/social practice, in Paul L., and Peter J. Taylor, eds. 1995. World Cities in a World-System. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press.

then read:
Peter Hall,  "Megacities, world cities and global cities" [new link]
J.V. Beaverstock, R.G. Smith and P.J. Taylor, "A Roster of World Cities"
P. Hall, "Christaller for a Global Age: Redrawing the Urban Hierarchy"
Saskia Sassen. The City: Between topographic representation and spatialized power projects Art Journal. Summer 2001. Vol.60, Iss. 2;  pg. 12.
Scott, Allen, John Agnew, Edward J. Soja, and Michael Storper. 2001. "Global City-Regions," in Global City-Regions: Trends Theory, Prospects. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press (Scott, Allen, ed.).
Amin, Ash and Nigel Thrift. "Cities in a Distanciated Economy," in Cities: Reimagining the Urban. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc. 2002, pp. Ch. 3: p.51 - p.77

see also:
Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network, Loughborough University, UK and their on-line publications.
Jan Lin, Globalization and the Revalorizing of Ethnic Places in Immigration Gateway Cities , in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Paul Stoller and Jasmin Tahmaseb McConath, City Life: West African Communities in New York, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Saskia Sassen. 2000. The global city: Strategic site/new frontier American Studies. Summer 2000.Vol.41, Iss. 2/3;  pg. 79.
Saskia Sassen. 2000. New frontiers facing urban sociology at the Millennium. The British Journal of Sociology. Andover: Jan/Mar 2000.Vol.51, Iss. 1;  pg. 143
Storper, Michael. 1997. The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy. New York: Guilford Press. (excerpt: Chapter 8, "The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy", pp. 195-220).
Waldinger, Roger. 1996. From Ellis Island to LAX: Immigrant prospects in the American city. The International Migration Review. New York: Winter 1996. Vol.30, Iss. 4;  pp. 1078-86. pdf.
The Guardian: The rise of megacities – interactive [link]

Nov 8

Turning the Urban Base vs. Cultural Superstructure on its Head: Culture, Urban Politics and the Future of Social Spaces
Sharon Zukin, Whose Culture? Whose City?, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Richard Florida, Cities and the Creative Class, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Mark Gottdiener, Looking at Themed Environments, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Mike Davis, Chinatown, Part Two?: The 'Internationalization' of Downtown Los Angeles, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Teresa P. R. Caldeira, Fortified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Pierre Hamel, Henri Lustiger-Thaler and Margit Mayer, Urban Social Movements - Local Thematics, Global Spaces, in The Urban Sociology Reader.
Parker, Simon, Urban Theory and the Urban Experience: Encountering the City (Routledge). Chs. 7-8.

see also:
Soja, Edward W. 1999. In different spaces: The cultural turn in urban and regional political economy. European Planning Studies. Abingdon: Feb 1999. Vol. 7, Iss. 1; p. 65-75. pdf.
Gottdiener, Mark Hutchison, Ray. 2010. New Urban Sociology (4th Edition) . Boulder, CO: Westview Press. [ebrary]

a detour via the LA School:
Michael Dear, "Los Angeles and the Chicago School: Invitation to a Debate" html + history + precepts

Nov 15

First Nature, Second Nature -or- the Interaction of Cities and the Natural Environment -or- Urban Infrastructure and the Commodification of Natural Resources [all readings on ctools] (see class blog: urbantheorynature.tumblr.com)

Gandy, Matthew. 2002. Concrete and clay : reworking nature in New York City, Urban and industrial environments. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. (Chapter 1: "Water, Space and Power," pp. 19-75) [NOTE: electronic text also available online via UM Library's NetLibrary.] *do also read the very useful introduction.

Williams, Raymond. 1980. "Ideas of Nature," in Culture And Materialism: Selected Essays. London: Verso, pp. 67-85.

Kaika, Maria, and Erik Swyngedouw. "Fetishizing the Modern City: The Phantasmagoria of Urban Technological Networks." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 24, No. 1, March 2000, pp. 120-138.

Nik Heynen, and Maria Kaika and Erik Swyngedouw. 2006. "Urban political ecology: politicizing the production of urban natures," in In the nature of cities : urban political ecology and the politics of urban metabolis. Routledge. (Ch. 1, pp. 1-20). [see also google books version]

Reisner, M. 1993. Cadillac desert: the American West and its disappearing water. revised ed. New York and London: Penguin Books. [chapter excerpts: "A Semidesert with a Desert Heart" and "A Country of Illusion," pp. 1-51.] (see also google book preview)

McHarg, Ian L. 1969. Design with nature. Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press. (excerpt: pp. 1-29)

see also:
Moore, Steven A. (2001) Technology, Place, and the Nonmodern Thesis. Journal of Architectural Education 54(3), pp. 130–139.
Jennifer Wolch. 2007. Green Urban Worlds. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97(2), pp. 373–384
Olwig, Kenneth R. "Landscape, Place and the State of Progress," in Progress: Geographical Essays, edited by Robert D. Sack Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2002, pp. 22-60.
Cronon, William. 1995. The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature. in William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 69-90. [link]
Cronon, William. 1991. Nature's metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. 1st ed. New York: W. W. Norton.[excerpt to be selected] -- or selection from
Beatley, Timothy. (1995) Planning and Sustainability: The Elements of a New (Improved?) Paradigm [link to be added]
Wheeler, Stephen M. (2002) The New Regionalism: Key Characteristics of an Emerging Movement.
Arsenault, Raymond. 1984. The End of the Long Hot Summer: The Air Conditioner and Southern Culture. The Journal of Southern History 50 (4):597-628.

Nov 29

Modernism, Modernization & Urban Development: International Perspectives

Holston, James. 1989. The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Comments/links: pp. 41-58 (part of ch2); 74-98 (part of ch3] [ctools]
alternate version: google book version (limited view)
(see also: Michael Kimmelman, 2005. The Last of the Moderns. The New York Times. May 15.)

Mitchell, Timothy. 2002. Rule of experts: Egypt, techno-politics, modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Comments/links: • ebrary viewer - full text (Chapter 3: The Character of Calculability, pp. 80-119).

Robinson, Jennifer. 2006. Ordinary cities: between modernity and development. London ; New York: Routledge. (Introduction, Chs. 1, 2, 4). [ctools]

Scott, James. Seeing Like a State (Chapter 3. Authoritarian High Modernism; see also Ch. 2: Cities, People and Language). ebrary viewer - full text

Watson, Vanessa. 2002. The Usefulness of Normative Planning Theories in the Context of Sub-Saharan Africa. Planning Theory 1 (1):27-52. [ctools]

see also:
Perlman, Janice E. 1976. The myth of marginality : urban poverty and politics in Rio de Janeiro. Berkeley: University of California Press. google book version
a selection from Anthony King, such as Spaces of Global Culture, etc.

Dec 6

Final Session
Parker, Simon, Urban Theory and the Urban Experience: Encountering the City (Routledge). Ch. 9.

This last session will provide an opportunity to link common themes from the semester and articulate a set of core questions, principles and debates in urban theory. (session will be held at instructor's home: maps to be provided)

TASK:  Each student is to come to the session with a one-page handout (bring copies for everyone, please) 
that articulates the student's understanding/conceptualization of urban theory. Format is flexible: you can combine text, keywords, questions, illustrations, diagrams, timelines, etc. Be ready to discuss and compare each student's contribution. Creativity and insightfulness  welcomed. You might provide a conceptual map of urban theory. I would also encourage you to upload your sheet onto the theory wiki on UM Coursetools.

Internet Links
UP540 (Planning Theory)

* see also the CTools site: "Urban Theory" (I will add class members to this site by the second week.)

Other Theory Readings of Interest (* indicates a useful background book to consider reading this summer)
Bridge, Gary, and Sophie Watson. 2000. A companion to the city, Blackwell companions to geography. Oxford ; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers.
* Bridge, Gary, and Sophie Watson. 2002. The Blackwell city reader, Blackwell readers in geography. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.
* Campbell, Scott, and Susan S. Fainstein. 2003. Readings in Planning Theory. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Certeau, Michel de, Luce Giard, and Pierre Mayol. 1998. The practice of everyday life. New rev. and augm. ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Cronon, William. 1991. Nature's metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: W. W. Norton.
Davis, Mike. 1990. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. New York: Verso.
Davis, Mike. 1998. Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster. New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt.
Dear, M. J., and J. Dallas Dishman. 2002. From Chicago to L.A. : making sense of urban theory. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
Dear, M. J. 2000. The postmodern urban condition. Oxford, UK ; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
Fainstein, Susan S. 2001. The City Builders: Property Development in New York and London, 1980-2000. 2nd edition. University of Kansas Press.
Harvey, David. 1996. Justice, Nature and the Geography of Differences. Oxford: Blackwell.
* Fainstein, Susan S., and Scott Campbell, eds. 2001. Readings in Urban Theory. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Fishman, Robert. 1982. Urban utopias in the twentieth century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier MIT Press.
Frisby, David. 1986. Fragments of modernity : theories of modernity in the work of Simmel, Kracauer, and Benjamin, Studies in contemporary German social thought. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Frisby, David. 2001. Cityscapes of modernity : critical explorations. Cambridge ; Malden, MA: Polity Press in association with Blackwell.
* Hall, Peter. 2001. Cities of Tomorrow : An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century. updated ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The consequences of modernity. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Gottdiener, Mark. 1985. The Social Production of Urban Space. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Harvey, David. 1989. The Condition of Post-Modernity. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hayden, Dolores. 2002. Redesigning the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life. W.W. Norton & Company
Hubbard, Phil, Rob Kitchin, and Gill Valentine (eds). 2004. Key thinkers on space and place. London; Thousand Oaks: Sage.
* Jacobs, Jane. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House.
* Jacobs, Jane. 1969. The Economy of Cities. New York: Vintage Press.
Krugman, Paul. 1997. Development, Geography, and Economic Theory (Ohlin Series). MIT Press.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. Critique of everyday life. London ; New York: Verso.
Lefebvre, Henri. 2003. The urban revolution. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
* Mumford, Lewis. 1961. The City in History. New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.
Lerup, Lars. 2000. After the city. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Sandercock, Leonie. 1998. Towards cosmopolis: planning for multicultural cities. Chichester, New York: John Wiley.
Park, Robert Ezra. 1927. The city. Chicago, Ill.,: The University of Chicago press.
Rae, Douglas W. 2003. City : urbanism and its end, The Yale ISPS series. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Rybczynski, Witold. 1995. City life : urban expectations in a new world. New York: Scribner.
Sassen, Saskia, ed. 2002. Global Networks, Linked Cities. Routledge.
Saunders, Peter. 1986. Social Theory and the Urban Question. revised ed. New York: Holmes and Meier.
Scott, Allen J., and Edward W. Soja, eds. 1996. The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State : How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Sennett, Richard. 1990. The conscience of the eye : the design and social life of cities. New York: Knopf.
Short, John R. 2006. Urban theory : a critical assessment. Basingstoke [England] ; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Simmel, Georg, and Kurt H. Wolff. 1950. The sociology of Georg Simmel. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.
Smith, Neil. 1990. Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.
Smith, Neil. 2003. American empire : Roosevelt's geographer and the prelude to globalization, California studies in critical human geography ; 9. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sorkin, Michael. 2002. Variations on a theme park: the new American city and the end of public space. New York: Hill and Wang. 2nd ed.
Tilly, Charles, and Willem Pieter Blockmans. 1994. Cities and the rise of states in Europe, A.D. 1000 to 1800. Boulder: Westview Press.
Tuan, Yi-fu. 1977. Space and place : the perspective of experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Ward, Stephen V. 1998.  Selling Places : The Marketing and Promotion of Towns and Cities, 1850-2000. Routledge.
Wirth, Louis. 1964. Louis Wirth on cities and social life; selected papers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Zukin, Sharon. 1995. The Culture of Cities. Blackwell.