This course is based on the premise that architecture, urban planning and urban design are visually-oriented professions and that learning about them should contain a strong visual component. It is also based on the pedagogical premise that film - an enormously popular art form - has in the past and continues to influence public attitudes toward American urbanism and urban issues.

This course should be FUN as well as educationally enriching. It will present a sweep of urban issues primarily in the form of videos and films, but supported by textbooks and supplementary readings. Students will view and discuss the films and readings, write reviews and papers, and discuss related problems of urban politics, history, suburbanization, architecture, the environment, immigration, and race. The approach will be interdisciplinary and will present the various perspectives of the many fields which build and interpret the city.

The course should familiarize students with the historical and political evolution of cities and urban areas, their major attractions, problems, and opportunities for future development. It will provide the student with alternative views of these issues and with various attempts to research the basic causes of urban problems and resolve them. In such films as Roger and Me and City of Hope, students will also learn how some contemporary American urban institutions operate, and they will contrast how things are supposed to be with how they actually are.

This course will consist of one film or video to be screened in each of the 15 weeks of the semester. Each screening will then be followed by a discussion of the issues raised in the film and the assigned readings. Outside experts with particular knowledge of an issue, may be invited to speak perhaps in a "Sisal and Exert" two-commentator format. For example, an architect might be invited to discuss with the class alternative theories of futuristic urban design; an artist might be invited to examine the imagery of the city as a work of art; a politician might discuss the workings and inevitable compromises of urban politics. Students will maintain a written Screening Diary and write a review of each screening to help transform what might be a passive viewing experience into an active synthesis of ideas. Screening diaries will be handed in and graded. Students will also write a midterm and final paper not longer than 3 pages double spaced.

Grades will be based on four elements:

1. Attend classes and participate in class discussion
2. Keep up on the reading assignments
3. Hand in screening diaries and papers on time
4. Enjoy the films and videos

There are two textbooks for this course:

Robert Sklar’s Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies, 1994 NY: Vintage Books

Urban Society, 9th Edition, 1999.

In addition, students will find copies of supplementary readings on reserve at the first floor secretary’s office, College of Urban Affairs, 1737 Euclid Avenue. These readings will amplify the basis for each class discussion, so keep up with the readings. The quality of the discussion will depend as much on the student’s preparation as on the professor’s.

Students will be expected to attend all classes and keep up with all reading assignments. Students will be asked to sign an attendance sheet at each class period. Students will be expected to view any videos missed.

Refer to the undergraduate CSU Bulletin for procedures on course add/drop and withdrawal, grading, and incomplete procedures.

Special needs: Anyone anticipating needing special accommodations to take exams or complete assignments must identify themselves to the instructor by the end of the second week of classes. These include accommodations for physical handicaps, learning disabilities and English as a second language.

Week 1 Topic: Urban History; Industrialization and Class Struggle
Film: Metropolis (Fritz Lang 1927, 90 min.)
Futuristic, inhumane city of the machine age. Startling designs and suggestion of class struggle.
Read: MMA: Chapter 1
US: Alfred Kazin ‘Fear of the City, 1783-1983
Supp: The City of Cinema: Interpreting Urban Images on Film, Nancy Green Leigh & Judith Kenny 1996.

Week 2 Topic: Transportation
Film: Taken For A Ride (PMBUR Video 2294 @
CSU, 55 min.)
Read: MMA: Chapter 3
US: Fred Barnes, "In Praise of Highways" & Robert Gurwitt, "The Quest for Common Ground"

Week 3 Topic: Environmental issues and water politics
Film: Chinatown. Roman Polanski, 1974, 131 min. Environmental issues and water politics in Los Angeles, wrapped inside a murder mystery. Oscar winner for best screenplay.
Read: MMA: Chapter 3
Supp: Jolting Noir with a Shot of Nihilism by Jim Shepard

Week 4 Topic: Immigration and Suburbanization
Film: Avalon. Barry Levinson, 1990. (126 min.)
The old immigration around 1900 & bittersweet success & disillusion.
Read: US: James Kunstler, "Home from Nowhere" & Rybcznski & Linneman, "Shrinking Cities"
Supp: "No Exit" by Barbara Vobejda, Washington Post, Weekly Edition, March 15-21, 1993
The Crabgrass Frontier by Kenneth Jackson 1985 NY: Oxford Univ. Press, Chap 11: Federal Subsidy and the Suburban Dream: How Washington Changed the American Housing Market. Ozzie & Harriet in Hell by Mike Davis, The Harvard Design Magazine
Environmentally Devastated Neighborhoods by Michael Greenberg & Dona Schneider "Painful, Violent Landscapes"; "The War on Drugs: A Continuation of the War on the African American Family" by Mary Hall, Smith College Studies in Social Work 67(3) 1997.

Week 5 Topic: Racial Issues
Film: Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee 1989 120 min. Depiction of life and a long hot day in the neighborhood.
Read: MMA: Chapter 4
Supp: Do the Right Thing, Movie Review, The New Republic July 1989; The Kerner Commission Twenty Years Later by Norman Krumholz

Week 6 Topic: Recreation
Film: Claiming Open Spaces, Austin Allen CSU
86 min.
Read: MMA: Chapter 5
US: Brendan L. Koerner, "Cities That Work"

NOTE: Paper # 1 and Screening Diaries due on Thursday February 24. Paper # 1: Using Taken for A Ride and Avalon as backdrops, discuss what you think of suburban sprawl. Should we build more highways to encourage it? Why or why not? 2-3 pages double spaced font 12 or 14 pts.

Week 7 Topic: Economic Development; Success and Failure
Film: Roger & Me, Michael Moore, 1990, 87 min.
Poletown, 60 min.
Read: US: "America’s Cities: They Can Yet Be Reconstructed"
Supp: "The Poletown Dilemma" Harvard Business School.

Week 8 Topic: Crime
Film: Kid Crime, 20th Century Series w/Mike Wallace @ CPL, Violent Crime & Children
50 min.
Read: US: James O. Wilson, "Broken Windows"; Tamar Jacoby, "Mandate for Anarchy"
Supp: William Julius Wilson "The Urban Underclass in Advanced Industrial Society" The New Urban Reality, The Brookings Institution, 1985; Mary Hall, "The War on Drugs, Continuation of the War on the African American Family" Smith College Studies in Social Work 67(3) 1997.

Week 9 Topic: Urban Politics
Film: City of Hope, John Syles 1991, 129 min.
Gritty, despairing tale of corrupt politics, economic development and a graphic urban love story.
Read: US: Blaine Harden, "Rejuvenation of Cities"
Supp: D.R. Judd, The Politics of American Cities (1984) Boston: Little Brown and Company, Chapter 12-Central City Political Leadership and the Politics of Redevelopment

Week 10 Topic: Social Class & Lifestyles in the City
Film: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, Stanley Kramer, 1967, 108 min. Racial and class issues gently explored by Poitier, Hepburn and
Tracy
Read: US: Ingrid G. Ellen "Welcome Neighbors" & Eyal Press "Division Street"

Week 11 Topic: Neighborhood Development
Film: Holding Ground: The Rebirth of Dudley Street; Building Hope
Read: US: George W. Liebmann, "Three Good Community Building Ideas from Abroad" and Barry Yeoman "Left Behind in Sand Town"
Supp: The Cleveland Community-Building Initiative Executive Summary - the Report & Recommendations of the Cleveland Foundation Commission on Poverty, 1992.

Week 12 Topic: Poverty & Welfare
Film: Poverty Outlaw, CPL, 60 min. Documentary from perspective on welfare recipients showing the impact of welfare reform
Read: US: B Katz & K. Carnevak, "The State of Welfare Caseloads in America"
US: Dreier & Atlas, "The Mansion Subsidy"; US: P. Nichols "Public Housing in Atlanta"

Week 13 Topic: The City of the Future as Urban Dystopia
Film: Bladerunner, Director’s Cut, Ridley Scott 116 min., 1992. The 21 st century "‘future" set in L.A. complete with decaying environment and murderous replicants.
Read: US: "Futureville" and Fred Siegel, "Back From the Brink"
Supp: Peter Drucker, Age of Social Transformation, The Atlantic Monthly, Nov. 1994.

NOTE: Paper # 2 and Screening Diaries due on May 1. Paper # 2: Using "Do the Right Thing", "Bladerunner" and class discussions on crime and poverty, and futurism to discuss the significance of race in the new world order of the 21st century. 2-3 pages double spaced font 12 or 14 pts.

Abercrombie, Stanley. Architecture as Art, New York: Harper & Row, 1986.

Barnett, Jonathan. The Elusive City, New York: Harper & Row, 1986.

Benedikt, Michael. For an Architecture of Reality, New York: Lumen Books, 1987.

Blake, Peter. Form Follows Fiasco: Why Modern Architecture Hasn’t Worked, Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1977.

Bush, Donald J. The Streamlined Decade, New York: George Braziller, 1975.

Caro, Robert A. The Power Broker, New York: Random House, 1974.

Collins, George. Visionary Drawings of Architecture and Planning, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1979.

Corn, Joseph. Imaging Tomorrow, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986.

Davis, Mike. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, Vintage Books, 1992.

Ferriss, Hugh. The Metropolis of Tomorrow, Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1986.

Fishman, Robert. Urban Utopias of the Twentieth Century, New York: Basic Books, 1977.

Goldsmith and Blakely. Separate Societies, Temple University Press, 1992.

Goodman, Robert. After the Planners, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971.

Howard, Ebenezer. Garden Cities of To-Morrow, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1965.

Huxtable, Ada Louise. The Tall Building Artistically Reconsidered, New York: Pantheon, 1986.

Krueckeberg, Donald, ed. Introduction to Planning History in the United States. New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Urban Policy research, Rutgers University, 1983.

LeCourbusier. The Radiant City, New York: Orion Press, 1967.

Lynch, Kevin. Good City Form, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981.

Mumford, Lewis. The Pentagon of Power, New York: Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich, 1970.

Saint, Andrew. The Image of the Architect, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.

Sorkin, Michael. Variations on the A Theme Park, New York: Hall and Wang, 1992.

Solar, Apollo. Arcology: The City in the Image of Man, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1969.

Trancik, Roger. Finding Lost Space, New York: Van Norstrand Reinhold, 1986.

Van dew Ryn, Sim, and Peter Calthorpe. Sustainable Communities, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1986.

Walden, Russell, ed. The Open Hand: Essays on Le Corbusier, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977.

White, E.B. One Man’s Meat, New York: Harper & Row, 1944.