The modern city is located at the intersection of built form and human imagination. Cities are as much about intangible ideas as they are about material facts; as much about construal as they are about construction. These two aspects of cities, moreover, cannot be separated from one another, either in scholarly analyses or in the lived experiences of people who inhabit them. At the heart this first year seminar is the modern city—a type of city that emerges in the nineteenth century—where the shock of the crowd, supra-human landscapes of industry, promiscuous forms of sociality, and unprecedented wealth alongside bone-breaking poverty have long made the city a place of both danger and promise. Modern urban experience, in turn, is one of constant, inexorable, and irreversible change—in social relationships, in sources of authority, and the in materiality of everyday life. This course will explore these intersections of built form, experience, and urban imagination in a diverse range cultural and geographical settings: from London, Paris, New York, and Chicago in the Anglo-European world; to Lagos, Mumbai, New Delhi, and Jakarta in Africa and Asia. In each of these settings we will question how urban imagination shapes the way people live in the city—and what consequences urban imagination has for the way people live together in the city.

Intended Audience:

Fist-year undergraduates

Class Format:

Seminar