Robert Goldman
Spring 2008
Howard 371
Office hours: 2-5 T; 11:30-12:30 Th

While cities long preceded the rise of modernity, urbanization has been a master process shaping the modern, and now, postmodern experience. In this decade, for the first time in human history, a greater portion of the human population lives in cities than in the countryside. Because of how market economies and new technologies are continuing to develop it is unlikely that the forces of urbanization will soon abate.

Because cities are so central to the economic and social organization of our lives they are also subject to intense critiques. It almost always seems that our cities are said to be in crisis. Harnessed to earlier stages of smokestack industrialization, cities were often seen as a deformity. More recently, headlines bemoan the fiscal crises of cities, or the social crises of grinding urban poverty and a collapsing educational infrastructure, or even the fears of suburban "sprawl" that may be sapping our moral and cultural values while contributing to a looming ecological nightmare. At the same time, cities have often been the 'bright light' to which humans have been attracted - the urban world is one where the action is, where speed and pace make for an exciting world of culture and opportunities for personal development.

Recent approaches to the study of cities conceptualize it as the social production of space and its converse, the spatial as the organization of the social, cultural and economic relations of daily life. We will adopt perspectives used by sociologists, political economists, and urban designers to look at how spaces are constructed both by adaptations to the physical environment and by the interactions of people -- for example, Jane Jacobs' study of sidewalks as a fundamental social space in city life. Similarly we will look at streets and freeways and malls as spaces that structure our everyday lives.

The spatial relations of cities also reveal the social relations of inequality by race and social class. The construction of cities not only evidences these relations but the adaptations that are made with respect to such relationships - e.g., population densities; the availability of jobs, segregated housing; suburbia and edge cities; gentrification; automobile transit vs. mass transit, etc. Each time this course has been taught, it has had a special focus. This term we will examine the matter of affordable housing and its design and social organization in Portland. By focusing on models of affordable housing, we will also try to draw together our conversations about the relationships between public and private spaces in our cities.

Required Books:

Jane Jacobs. The Death & Life of Great American Cities, NY: Modern Library Edition, 1993, 1961.

James Howard Kunstler. The Geography of Nowhere. Simon & Schuster, 1993.

Andy Merrifield, Dialectical Urbanism: Social Struggles in the Capitalist City. Monthly Review Press. 2000.

Lance Freeman. There Goes the ‘Hood: views of gentrification from the ground up. Temple University Press. 2006.

Readings:

The Production of Social Spaces and Social Relations
Jane Jacobs, "The Peculiar Nature of Cities," pp.5-183 in The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Peter Jukes, A Shout in the Street: an excursion into the modern city. 1990. "Paris: Commodities and Bodies," pp.59-97.
"Street as Market," pp.99-114.
"Freeways," pp.181-233.

Jane Jacobs, "The Conditions for City Diversity," pp.187-312 in The Death & Life of Great American Cities.

Jane Jacobs, "Forces of Decay & Regeneration," pp.315-414 in The Death & Life of Great American Cities.


Place versus Space – suburbia and beyond
James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere.

Alexandra Murphy, “The Suburban Ghetto: The Legacy of Herbert Gans in Understanding the Experience of Poverty in Recently Impoverished American Suburbs.” City & Community, 2007, 03-01, pp.21

Dolores Hayden. “Nostalgia and Futurism,” pp.201-229 in Building Suburbia, Vintage, 2004.


Unequal Social Relations & City Life
Andy Merrifield, Dialectical Urbanism: Social Struggles in the Capitalist City.

Karen Gibson. "Bleeding Albina: A History of Community Disinvestment, 1940-2000." Transforming Anthropology 15.1 (2007): 3-25.

Gregory D. Squires and Charis E. Kubrin. “Privileged Places: Race, Uneven Development and the Geography of Opportunity in Urban America,” Urban Studies, 42, 1 (January 2005):47-68.

Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, American project : the rise and fall of a modern ghetto. Harvard University Press. 2000

A Dialectic of Urban Fear

Mike Davis. “Fortress Los Angeles: The Militarization of Urban Space,” pp.223-263 in City of Quartz. Vintage 1992.

Mike Davis, "The Hammer & the Rock," pp.267-322 in City of Quartz. Vintage 1992.


Gentrification: The Crisis, or Salvation, of American Urbanism?

Neil Smith. "New City, New Frontier: the lower East Side as wild, wild West," pp.61-93 in Michael Sorkin (ed), Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space, 1992.

Jason Hackworth. "The Changing State of Gentrification." Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie/Journal of Social and Economic Geography 92.4 (2001): 464-477.

Neil Smith. "New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy." Antipode 34.3 (2002): 427-450.

Lance Freeman. There Goes the ‘Hood: views of gentrification from the ground up.

Northeast Passage: the inner city & the American dream. SydHonda Cinema Productions, 2002. Video.

Jason Patch. “The embedded landscape of gentrification,” Visual Studies, 19, 2, October 2004:169-186.

Arlene Davila. "Dreams of Place: Housing, Gentrification, and the Marketing of Space in El Barrio." Centro Journal 15.1 (2003): 112-137.

Judith DeSena. "What's a Mother to do?" Gentrification, School Selection, and the Consequences for Community Cohesion." American Behavioral Scientist 50.2 (2006): 241-257.

Daniel Sullivan. "Reassessing Gentrification: Measuring Residents' Opinions using Survey Data." Urban Affairs Review 42.4 (2007): 583-592.


Symbolic Economies -- Cultural Spaces of Consumption

Ada Louise Huxtable, “Inventing American Reality,” New York Review of Books, Dec. 3, 1992, pp. 24-29.

Margaret Crawford, "The World in a Shopping Mall," pp.3-30 in Sorkin (ed.) Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space. 1992.


Questions of Affordable Housing, Public spaces and Progressive Change

Claire Cooper Marcus & Wendy Sarkissian. Housing as If People Mattered: Site Design Guidelines for Medium-Density Family Housing. University of California Press. 1968, pp.1-32.

Portland Metro – Housing Choices & Affordability. http://www.metro-region.org/index.cfm/go/by.web/id=25114

The City Club of Portland, “Affordable Housing Report.” 2002.

Anne B. Shlay. “Low-income Homeownership: American Dream or Delusion? Urban Studies,” 43, 3, 511–531, March 2006.

Robert M. Rakoff. “Ideology in Everyday Life - The Meaning of the House,” Politics & Society, 7 (1977): 85-104.

Owen Kirkpatrick. "The Two "Logics" of Community Development: Neighborhoods, Markets, & Community Development Corporations." Politics & Society 35.2 (2007): 329-359.

James Howard Kunstler, Home from Nowhere. Simon & Schuster, 1996. "Creating Someplace," pp.109-149. Jane Jacobs, "Different Tactics," pp.417-585 in The Death & Life of Great American Cities,

Dolores Hayden, "What would a non-sexist city be like? Speculations on housing, urban design & human work," pp.503-518 in The City Reader (ed.) Richard LeGates and F. Stout), Routledge, 2000.

David Harvey, "Social Justice, postmodernism, & the city," pp.199-207 in The City Reader (ed.) Richard LeGates & F. Stout), Routledge, 2000.


Assignments:

Photo-essay (2000 words) – should include pictorial data of a city space – e.g., streets, sidewalks, playgrounds, parks, plazas, public art, architectural patterns/differences, restaurants, bridges, etc.

An analytic profile (1500 words) of a Portland census tract or neighborhood district. Using data from the US Census, portlandmaps.com, or the data available through the Oregon Sustainable Community Digital Library, each student should select a geographic area in Portland and analyze that area in terms of income, housing stocks -- patterns of gentrification, inflation, etc. – as well as other fundamental factors influencing the experience of everyday life (e.g., crime, transit, access to public resources, etc).
Later in the term you will be asked to write a second profile of the same Portland district based on your application of design guidelines selected from Clare Marcus Cooper. (1500 words)

Instead of the usual midterm exam to assess how well you are keeping up with, and how well you understand, the readings and lectures, you will be asked to do Moodle reading notes – for each class period you are required to write a set of notes about the readings and lectures. This daily/weekly writing will also enable you to exercise both creative and critical abilities in synthesizing and critiquing materials we have covered. This may be done by yourself or in small groups to facilitate dialogue about the readings and the questions you deem important.

Project (groups or individual) to be presented during the final. Topics will be about the provision of affordable housing and models of affordable housing – from policy to design. (design a sustainable city or design an equitable city -- architecture and the social production of space

Grades: Total points = 1000
Attendance is mandatory. After 3 missed classes, grade reduction will begin at a rate of 25 points per session. After 7 missed classes, the rate shifts to 50 points per session.

Photo-essay - 200 points

Analytic profile and guideline profile – 250 points

Moodle writing – 250 points

Project – 300 points