Day I Day II Day III Day IV Day V
Day VI Day VII Day VIII Day IX Day X

Unit I: Introduction to the Modern City

Day One: "Birth" of the "Modern" "European" "City"

How do we define the "Modern"? What is a "city" and what do cities have to do with modernity? How and why might the modern city be "born" and how does it mature?

Introduction to the course
Defining terms
The role of history in the course
Constructing our inquiry: Guiding questions and themes
Expectations
n.b. Please remember to read Hard Times by the end of spring break.
n.b. Please be sure that Mr. Meyers has you on the email list. Email himat ameyers@ecfs.org with your full name, the band in which you meet and your email address.

topical web sites

The Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace
The Design of the Crystal Palace
Bibliotheque Ste. Genevieve
19th Century London:
19th Century Paris
19th C. Vienn

Day Two: Exploring the Modern

What do Marx and Berman mean when theysay "all that is solid melts into air?" What was "solid" and why does it "melt." What are the ramifications of the "meltdown"?

Turn in a response to the daily questionfor a grade
Turn in 5 identifications for grade
Discuss Web Walks project
Choose cities

  • Documents on Modernity and the City:  Rousseau, Smith, Marx, Goethe, Mill, Freud, Baudelaire, Zola, Dickens, Kraus, Wittgenstein. Hobsbawm, Loos, Sant’Elia, Marinetti, Wagner, etc.
  • Marshall Berman, "Modernity- Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow," from All That Is Solid Melts IntoAir  (1982) 15-36

Identify

Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Modern art, "modernity," capitalism, laissez-faire capitalism, the bourgeoisie, French Revolution, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The New Eloise, the Industrial Revolution, nation states, Revolutions of 1848, the Communist Manifesto, dialectical materialism, Hegel, Freiderich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Philip Glass, Twyla Tharp, Jackson Pollock, Italian Futurism, Antonio Sant’Elia, Le Corbusier, Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, Max Weber’s The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Daniel Bell’s The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, “post-modernism”, Michel Foucault, “total institutions”, nihilism, skepticism

Day Three: Looking at the City I

How do you look at a city? What are the ways in which one might describe and analyze the city. What makes history “urban” history? How do Elon and Olsen approach Vienna?

Please email Mr Meyers at ameyers@ecfs.org with your full name, section and email address
Choosing city groups- Consider which city you would like to "join" for the semester Web Walks project

  • Amos Elon, “Report from Vienna,” The New Yorker , 92-102
  • Olsen, 3-11
  • Review the French Revolution on your own in Sullivan ch. 38

Identify

Hapsburg dynasty, Nazism, anti-semitism, World War II, Bruno Kreisky, Kurt Waldheim, Sigmund Freud, Mahnmal, Heldenplatz, Burgtheater, Adolph Hitler, Leopoldstat, Danube, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Mitteleuropa, Karl Kraus

Questions:

1. What is the role of the city in the development of modern Europe?
2. What social and economic classes find a home in the pre-industrial city?
3. What is the connection between the monarchy, the bourgeoisie and the city? Between nationalism and the city

Day Four: Looking at the City II

How does the writer  you have studied interpret the city? How does  the  perspective  of the author affect his/her analysis?  Why does the city lend itself to such distinct modes of interpretation?

Please email Mr Meyers at ameyers@ecfs.org with your full name, section and email address

London group:

  • Jane Jacobs, “The Uses of Sidewalks: Contact,” from The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), 55-73 [Glazer, 95-112]
  • ___________ “The Kind of Problem a City Is,” from The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), 428-44

    Paris group:

  • Henri Lefebvre, “Space: Social Product and Use Value,” from Critical Sociology (1970), 285-295

    Vienna group:

  • J.B. Jackson, “The Discovery of the Street,” from The Necessity for Ruins (1980), 55-66 [Glazer 75-86]

    All:

  • Review the War of 1812 and the Congress of Vienna on your own in Sullivan ch. 39

Questions

1. How would you characterize the point of view of the author (Jacobs, Lefebvre or Jackson)? If you had to give it a label (ie. "sociological," "historical," "cultural," etc.), what "school" would you assign to the author you read?
2. Skim the intorductions of the other two readings and describe what combination of approaches you might take to analyzing/explaining the city

Day Five: Urban Origins- Polis to Castrum

What is the “public realm”?  Is the city a political, social , geographical, religious or economic construct? What was the public realm in antiquity?

Identify:

City state, polis,  Plato's definition of the polis, Aristotle’s Politics, acropolis,  agora, Hippodamus of Miletus, Athens, Piraeus, Parthenon, Panathenaic Way, Doric, Ionic and Corinthian styles, stoa, peristyle, Athena Parthenos, Athena Nike, Propylea, Timgad, colonia, insulae, cardo and decumanus, Londinium

Questions:

1. What are the basic constituents of urban form?
2. How do Greek and Roman public spaces differ both in form and content? What are the equivalents of agora and forum in 19th century Europe? In America today? How can you explain the similarities and differences?

Day Seven: Urban Origins-Clergy, King, and Commerce

How do the clergy, king and commerce contribute to Medieval European townmaking? To Renaissance and Baroque townmaking? 

  • Lewis Mumford, “The Medieval Town,” from The City in History (1961), 300-312 [Glazer, 60-74]
  • in class slides of medieval towns
  • A. E. G. Morris, History of Urban Form (1979) 143-149 (Sixtus V), 175-177 (Versailles)
  • in class slides of medieval and Baroque urbanism

Identify

“organic planning” vs. “rational planning” (Mumford), the Castle, Abbey (monastery), Cathedral, marketplace, “burg,” Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, Pope Sixtus V, Piazza del Popolo, the Seven Hills of Rome, Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann (Paris), Capitoline Hill Piazza (Campidoglio), Michelangelo, Le Nôtre, Versaille

Questions:

1. How are changes in the political economy of Europe reflected in the evolution of medieval towns? How does the public realm evolve with the fall of Rome and the rise of new political and economic institutions (ie feudalism, manorialism, the Church, monasteries, the rise of national monarchies, markets, etc)
2. How do the ideals of the Renaissance transform urban design? How do the innovations of Renaissance planning represent a spatial manifestation of Renaissance (modern?) principles?
3. What are the politics of Medieval and Renaissance urban space?
4. If both aristocratic Florence, absolutist Paris and republican Washington, DC apply the lessons of Renaissance perspective, what is the common thread? Can urban form determine political/social content? Can space manifest specific and unchanging ideas?

Day Eight: London and the Power of Empiricism- Roman Castrum to Tudor/Stuart/Hanoverian Capital  

How does London’s plan, or lack therof, reflect England’s  history: politcal, social and economic?

Web Walks work

Identify:

The Thames, Westminster, City of London, Whitehall, the Strand, Covent Garden, Inigo Jones, Charles I, Lincoln’s Inn’s Fields, The Fire of London, Wren’s Plan for London, St. Pauls’ Cathedral, Rebuilding Act of 1667, Soho Square, Mayfair Squares, Cavendish Square, Queen Anne’s Square, Regent’s Park and Street, John Nash

Day Nine: Paris and the Rise of Rationality- Urbanism of the Bourbon Monarchy 

How does Paris’ plan reflect France’s  history: politcal, social and economic?

Web Walks work

Identify:

Henry IV, Le Nôtre, Champs Elysées, Pont Neuf, Place des Vosges, Place des Victoires, Place Vendôme, Ile St. Louis, Grands Boulevards, Place de la Concorde (Louis XV), Jacques-Ange Gabriel,

Day Ten: Vienna- Jewel of the Hapsburg Empire

How does Vienna’s plan reflect Austria’s  history: politcal, social and economic?

Web Walks work
n.b. Please remember to read Hard Times by the end of spring break.

Identify:

Danube River, Turkish Seiges of 1529 and 1683, Altstadt, Linienwall (1704), Hofburg, Hapsburgs, Emperor Franz Josef, Rathaus, Ludwig von Förster, Ringstrasse,

Topical web sites:
Imperial House of Hapsburg: http://www.hapsburg.com/
The House of Habsburg: http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/1605/habsburg.htm
Short History of Vienna: http://www.arch.kth.se/hemsidor/otherhome/octavianhome/Austria/vienhist.html


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