Goals of Urban Planning Assignment | Urban Planning
I. From the textbook, (chapter 4 especially) the ppts (esp. the Week I, “Origins of the Urban Crisis” ppt, and the slides in the Urbanism and Decentrism ppt on Marx and Engels theory of the division and town and country and why this develops) and the David Gordon article on Capitalist Development and the History of American Cities: discuss and explain how and why–what were the motivations–the modern city/urbanization/suburbanization, and the fiscal crisis of American cities, developed. What social problems did this development create, or, at least, exacerbate enormously?
II. Discuss the how different thinkers have different goals for urban planning, in order to resolve the problems created by this metro-urban/suburban development by the 20th century: Use the the readings pertaining to these thinkers (see below) my ppt, “Urbanism and Decentrism,” and use the pdf of the book, Voices of Decline, by Robert Beuregard (look in the index to find passages/chapters about Moses, Jacobs, and Mumford, and on the concepts of progressivism (Moses) Jacobs (urbanism) and Mumford (planned, socialist decentrism, vs. capitalist, suburban decentralism). .
a. “Progressives” like Moses, (Harvey and Berman text passages on Moses)
b. Middle class reformers like Jane Jacobs, (pdf of Death and Life of Great American cities, esp. the introduction where she attacks both Moses’ Progressivism and Mumford’s Decentrism)
c. Socialist Decentrists like Marx and Engels, and Lewis Mumford:(look at Mumford’s critique of Jacobs’ “Home Remedies for Urban Cancer.”
Compare and contrast the theories of these eminal authors in the field of urban planning and politics. How do these different views relate to David Harvey’s notion that different economic classes have different views of what the goals for city development/transformation/life ought to be. Minimum 2 pages length.
The textbook we are using for this class is called : Nancy Kleniewski, Cities, Change, and Conflict, Fifth Edition (2019). Routledge, Taylor and Francis, Inc
