“New York is the perfect model of a city,” stated Lewis Mumford, “not the model of a perfect city.” This seminar counterposes the ideas of four visionary thinkers whose radically different perspectives on the modern city were shaped by their responses to New York’s twentieth-century urban and architectural development: Lewis Mumford (1895–1990), Robert Moses (1888–1981), Jane Jacobs (1916–2006), and Rem Koolhaas (1944–). We explore the issues that variously engaged them, at times in contentious arguments with each other, from community and civic representation to density, scale, and complexity; from infrastructure and mobility to public housing and environmental sustainability; from social diversity, human welfare, and everyday urban life to architecture’s role in the collective imaginary. New York has been called the capital of the twentieth century. What is it becoming today? Is it still a paradigm for urban speculation? What kind of “usable past”—to quote Mumford again—does it offer? The focus of the seminar is on both ideas and realities, urban theories and history on the ground. In reassessing the legacies of these four figures we ultimately aim to reflect on the future of New York and of cities in general. Discussions of key readings by and about them are supplemented by lectures on the city’s historical development and case-study presentations of significant buildings and sites. Students are asked to make archival visits and study trips to New York to conduct research.
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