Prof Richard Burdett TW2 8.01L

Dr Gunter Gassner TW1  8.01

This course is compulsory on the MSc in City Design and Social Science. This course is available on the MSc in Sociology. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This is a capped course and we can only accept 32 students. If you are not registered on the MSc City Design and Social Design please submit an e-mail to Gunter Gassner motivating your inclusion on the course, ONCE you have attended the first introductory lecture where we will be available to respond to individual questions.

The course examines the relationship between built form and its social, political and cultural impacts in the contemporary, changing city. By introducing students to key concepts and methodologies in city making, the course investigates how the design of our complex urban environments affects the people who live in them. The course focuses on current urban research and attempts to reconcile the often complex inter-connections between urban theory, research, policy and practice. While a range of contemporary cities form the base for the course, it is structured around a series of urban design principles and concerns which will be discussed by means of the following dualities: scale and order; plan and use; infrastructure and equity; accretion and rupture; visual order and informality; local and global; resilience and legacy. In exploring the links between the physical and social structure of the city on a macro and a micro scale, the course examines the contemporary city from close by and from afar, looking down, up and into it.

10 hours of lectures and 20 hours of seminars in the MT.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the MT.

Written feedback is given within two weeks of the essay submission, and in addition a writing seminar is incorporated in the course in preparation for the summative assessed essay.

A detailed reading list will be distributed at the beginning of the course. Core background includes: Burdett,R and Sudjic, D (2008) The Endless City, London, Phaidon; Burdett, R and Sudjic, D (2011) Living in the Endless City; Larice, M. and Macdonald, E. (eds) (2007) The Urban Design Reader. London and New York: Routledge;. R. Sennett, (1991) The Conscience of the Eye: the design and social life of cities, London, Faber and Faber.

Essay (100%, 5000 words) in the LT.

An illustrated course essay of not more than 5,000 words to be submitted by 4pm on the first Tuesday of LT, two hard copies to be handed in to the Cities Administration Office, a third copy to be posted to Moodle. 

Attendance at seminars and submission of all set coursework is required.