Catalog

Theory of City Form

Architecture MIT CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 26 lectures

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.

Syllabus

  1. 1 Lec 1: Introduction
  2. 2 Lec 2: Normative Theory I: The City as Supernatural
  3. 3 Lec 3: Normative Theory II: The City as Machine
  4. 4 Lec 4: Normative Theory III: The City as Organism
  5. 5 Lec 5: Descriptive and Functional Theory
  6. 6 Lec 6: Dimensions, Patterns, Agreements, Structure, and Syntax
  7. 7 Lec 7: The Early Cities of Capitalism
  8. 8 Lec 8: Transformations I: London
  9. 9 Lec 9: Transformations II: Paris
  10. 10 Lec 10: Transformations III: Vienna and Barcelona
  11. 11 Lec 11: Transformations IV: Chicago
  12. 12 Lec 12: Transformations V: Panopticism, St. Petersburg and Berlin
  13. 13 Lec 13: Utopianism as Social Reform and Built Form
  14. 14 Lec 14: 20th Century Realizations: Russia and Great Britain
  15. 15 Lec 15: City Form and Process
  16. 16 Lec 16: Spatial & Social Structure I: Theory
  17. 17 Lec 17: Spatial & Social Structure II: Bipolarity
  18. 18 Lec 18: Spatial & Social Structure III: Colony & Post-colony
  19. 19 Lec 19: Form Models I: Modern and Post-modern Urbanism
  20. 20 Lec 20: Form Models II: Open-endedness and Prophecy
  21. 21 Lec 21: Form Models III and IV: Rationality and Memory
  22. 22 Lec 22: Cases I: Public and Private Domains
  23. 23 Lec 23: Cases II: Suburbs and Periphery
  24. 24 Lec 24: Cases III: Post-urbanism and Resource Conservation
  25. 25 Lec 25: Cases IV: Hyper and Mega-urbanism
  26. 26 Lec 26: Conclusion: Towards a Theory of City Form

Course materials