This Study Guide prepared by:
Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D.
Elaine Bontempi,
M.Ed.
Catherine Kerley
Learning Objectives:
Upon successful completion of this course,
the learner will be able to
1. Analyze the messages and cultural attitudes
embodied in the design, layout, and mixture of stores in a shopping mall;
2. Understand and describe the basic tenets of “new
urbanism” as applied to housing developments;
3. Explain how urban design and public space have an
impact on individuals’ behavior, sense of identity, and community development;
4. Understand the unwritten “codes of space” that
surround traditional office settings, and the messages they transmit regarding
hierarchy, gender disenfranchisement, gender relations, and cultural values;
5. Explain how “edge cities” differ from urban areas
and previous notions of suburbia and suburban values; and how the layout
reflects how communities see themselves, their core values, and their futures.
Margaret Crawford, "The World in a Shopping Mall"
Variations on a Theme Park: The New
Author
Biography
Margaret Crawford is Professor of Urban
Design and Planning Theory at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She
teaches courses in the history and theory of urban development, planning, and
design, including GSD 3301:
Contemporary Urban Dynamics. Her research focuses on the evolution and
uses and meanings of urban space. Her book, Building the Workingman's Paradise:
The Design of American Company Towns, examines the
rise and fall of professionally designed industrial environments. She edited The Car
and the City: The Automobile, the Built
Environment, and Daily Urban Life and Everyday Urbanism, and has
published numerous articles on shopping malls, public space, and other issues
in the American built environment. Before coming to the GSD, Crawford was the
chair of the History, Theory, and Humanities program at the Southern California
Institute for Architecture. She has also taught at the
Multiple-Choice Questions:
Comprehension/Chapter/reading-specific
Before You Read
When you go to a mall to shop, what do you
notice about the layout, the decor, and the overall atmosphere? Consider the idea that “the mall is a
text.” If you “read” the mall, what
messages are being communicated?
After You Read
If you were to create an Edmonton-type
mall in or near your hometown, what would you include? Would you have a theme? What would it be? How would you attract visitors to all regions
of the mall so that all stores have traffic?
How would you “manage the messages” that you would be creating with your
layout, design, and placement of stores?
Web links
http://www.westedmall.com
http://www.library.cornell.edu/Reps/DOCS/peck.htm
http://www.umkc.edu/whmckc/PUBLICATIONS/JCN/JCNspeeches.htm
http://wwwshops.com/malls/
http://www.scwonline.com/
Daphne Spain, "Spatial
Segregation and Gender Stratification in the Workplace" (+gender) from
Author
Biography
Daphne
Multiple-Choice Questions:
Comprehension/Chapter/reading-specific
Before You Read
When you imagine the sort of space you
would like to be working in, what is it?
If it is in an office, what would you like it to look like? Why?
After You Read
Discuss five office situations that either
support or call into question Spain’s assertions about the way that people read
meaning into office space, and how women’s space tends to connote less power or
influence. How do you think the trend
toward telecommuting and home offices will affect this?
Web
links
Raising Sons in a
World of Changing Gender Rules
http://www.cew.wisc.edu/equity/raising_sons_in_a_world_of_chang.htm
http://www.cew.wisc.edu/equity/gender%20wage%20gap.htm
http://www.aflcio.org/women/case_eqpay.htm
http://www.directcarealliance.org/sections/who_are.htm
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/gender.html
Kenneth Meeks, "Shopping in a Group While Black: A Coach's
Story" (+race)
Author
Biography
Kenneth Meeks is managing editor of Black
Enterprise magazine.
Multiple Choice Questions:
Comprehension/Chapter/reading-specific
Before You Read
When and where does racial profiling
occur? Describe three examples of racial
profiling. Is it ever justified?
After You Read
Have you ever been the target of racial
profiling? Describe the experience and
how you felt. Have you ever been the
target of negative profiling--either because of your age, the clothes you were
wearing, your companions, or other factors?
Describe the experience, how you felt, and what thoughts crossed your
mind. Did you think you deserved
it? Why or why not?
Web
links
http://www.wolfmanproductions.com/meeks.htm
The “Crime” of
Shopping while Black
http://www.aestheticrealism.net/aesnyc141/aesthetics-and-life/Crime-of-
SWB-dl.htm
Another article
about shopping while black
http://personalwebs.myriad.net/steveb/shopping.html
The Color of
Justice: Driving While Black
http://news.mpr.org/features/200111/12_newsroom_colorofjustice/dwb.
shtml
http://www.cathyharris.homestead.com/
William L. Hamilton, "How Suburban Design is Failing Teenagers" The
Author
Biography
William L. Hamilton is a staff writer for the New York Times.
Multiple Choice Questions:
Comprehension/Chapter/reading-specific
Before You Read
Do you believe that teenagers are judged
by their appearance, and then placed into rigid, hard-to-break-out-of
groups? Describe three examples, and
list the pro’s and con’s of being arbitrarily judged, labeled, and placed into
a social group.
After You Read
What makes life in a suburb different for
a teenager than being in an urban or rural environment? Do you believe that the “dangers of suburbia”
are exaggerated or are they on target?
List five examples to support your position.
Web links
The Breakup:
Suburbs try smaller high schools.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=33hs.h20
Changing
the culture of planning toward greater equity.
http://www.plannersnetwork.org/htm/pub/archives/148/Krumholz.html
Columbine High
School shootings.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/columbine/
http://www.living-room.org/suburbia/subteen.htm
Celebration—The Magical
Mouse.
http://www.xone.net/celebration/
With
the World Redesigned, What Role for Designers?
http://www.kare.com/articles/redesigned.html
Joel Garreau, "Edge City: Life on
the New Frontier" American Demographics,Sept 1991 v13 n9 p24(7)
Author Biography
Joel Garreau (garreau@well.com), author of Edge City: Life on the New Frontier Doubleday/Anchor,
is a Washington Post staff writer and
senior fellow at George Mason University's Institute of Public Policy.
Multiple Choice Questions:
Comprehension/Chapter/reading-specific
Before You Read
How do you think people think of
themselves and their neighbors if they live in a neighborhood that is part of a
development featuring large lots, lots of space, and a long commute to work? How is that different than the experience of
those who live in urban environments?
After You Read
Describe, step-by-step, the origin and
evolution of an “edge city.” If you
could be an urban planner, how would you influence each stage? Why?
Do you find any ethical or environmental issues to be particularly
troubling? Describe them.
Web links
Edgier Cities.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.12/edgier.cities_pr.html
The New Urbanism: An
Alternative to Modern, Automobile-Oriented Planning and Development.
http://www.newurbannews.com/AboutNewUrbanism.html
Beyond the Edge: The Dynamism of Postsuburban
Regions.
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~kling/postedge.html
http://slf.gweep.net/~sfoskett/mqp/mqp_fin2.html
http://www3.sympatico.ca/david.macleod/ECITIES.HTM
William Booth, "A White Migration North from
Author
Biography
William Booth is a writer for the
Multiple Choice Questions:
Comprehension/Chapter/reading-specific
Before You Read
What are the various messages found in the
typical features of a gated community?
List five and explain their significance. Examples could be such things as the entry
gate, security guards for the community, list of statutes and regulations about
how you can decorate your house or your lawn, and so forth.
After You Read
Define demographic
balkanization and describe where it is happening in other parts of
society. Describe an example from your
own experience, and explore the potential consequences of the phenomenon.
Web links
http://cityofweston.net/
A response to the
article just read, “A White Migration North from Miami”.
http://www.usccr.gov/nwsrel/archives/1998/112498.htm
http://www.miami-immigration.com/
Miami-Dade County
facts from U.S. census.
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/12/12025.html
http://racerelations.about.com/library/weekly/aa063001a.htm
Sarah Boxer, "A Remedy for the Rootlessness
of Modern Suburban Life?" The New York Times
Author
Biography
Sarah Boxer was born in
10- Multiple Choice Questions:
Comprehension/Chapter/reading-specific
Before You Read
What do you think it would be like to live
life on a movie set or in a theme park where all the themes, motifs, styles,
and so forth are completely constructed?
How would you like to have to wear theme clothing as well? For example, if you lived in a
desert-Southwest themed home, you would be required to wear turquoise jewelry,
a bolo tie, and cowboy hat. How do you
think it would begin to impact the way you think about yourself?
After You Read
What do you think about Celebration,
Web links
http://www.theseasideinstitute.org/
http://kentlandsusa.com/
Laguna West: New Urbanist Snout Houses
http://www.demographia.com/db-nu-calgw.htm
http://www.cnu.org/
http://www.newurbanism.org/
Claire Shepherd Lanier,
"Re-thinking '
Claire
Shepherd Lanier teaches at the
Multiple Choice Questions:
Comprehension/Chapter/reading-specific
Before You Read
List theme parks you know of or have
visited. What are some of the
themes? Think of theme parks or
miniature golf courses that include the following: Cape Cod Village, Victorian Town Square,
Independence Square, Wild West, Mexican Hacienda, Southwest Pueblo, Scottish
Castle, English Manor House, Future World, Gothic Cathedral, Haunted House,
Great Wall of China, Caribbean Splash Water Park, and Angkor Wat. Which was your favorite? Would you like to live in a neighborhood with
one of those themes? What does
conforming to a theme do to the atmosphere of the neighborhood?
After You Read
Imagine that you were commissioned to
develop a new development outside your city.
Name five features that it would include and describe their function.
How would you assure people of diversity and access? List three ways.
Web
links
http://www.prospectnewtown.com/
Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company:
Architects and Town Planners
http://www.dpz.com/
Whose Urbanism: An article
critiquing new urbanism
http://www.architecturemag.com/nov98/spec/city/city.asp
Our Urbanism: A response to
the Whose Urbanism article by Duany
http://www.architecturemag.com/dec98/spec/city/city.asp
The New Urbanism Challenges
Conventional Planning
http://www.lincolninst.edu/landline/1996/septembr/newurb2.html
Bonus
Whitney Gould, "New Urbanism Needs to Keep Racial Issues in
Mind" (+race)
Author
Biography
Whitney Gould is a writer for The
Multiple Choice Questions:
Comprehension/Chapter/reading-specific
Before You Read
When you think of a neighborhood that is
predominantly black, what are the first images that come to mind? What are other issues that come to mind? Why? Describe the black communities that you
have seen.
After You Read
After reading the article, what can you
suggest as five major strategies for overcoming resistance to having racially
mixed, culturally diverse neighborhoods?
Web
links
The Racial Justice
and Regional Equity Project
http://www1.umn.edu/irp/rjreindex.html
http://www.kunstler.com/
http://www.jsonline.com/news/census2000/mar01/loss23032201.asp
http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~pgordon/urbanism.html
http://www.patternlanguage.com/townplanning/cnucharter.htm
Visual Analysis
West Edmonton Mall.
http://www.westedmall.com/planavisit/planavisit.html
Essay Questions
1.
What do you think the people leaning on the bridge are looking at? How many of the elements in this scene are
native to
2.
Think of what the phrase the commodification of experience might mean. On one level, it indicates that experience
has been turned into a commodity to buy and to sell. The shopping experience itself is not simply
a hunt for commodities, but has been turned into a commodity, too. What are the implications? Do shopping experiences help people bond in
increasingly fragmented times? To
continue the same line of thinking, what does it tell us about our life and
times that certain individuals would choose to spend time in this
environment? Does it seem safe? Why?
Who are able to visit such a place?
Who are not?
New Urbanism.
Essay Questions
1.
When you take a look at the drawing that represents a new urban
community, what messages are being communicated? Explore Currier and Ives prints, images of
utopian experiments in nineteenth-century
Celebration,
http://www.themagicalmouse.com/celebration/pic0010.php
Essay Questions
1.
One of the goals of “new urbanism” is to provide the opportunity for
individuals to live near their place of employment. Take a look at the picture--what are most of
the jobs likely to be? If they are
primarily in the service sector--restaurant jobs, cashier in a clothing store,
shoe sales--what are the pay scales? How
much do homes in Celebration,
2.
Who decides when a dog is barking too loud, or an individual is too
nonconformist to fit into a planned neighborhood? What are the values that are likely to
prevail? Is this good or bad? List three reasons why it is good for
individuals to learn to conform, learn good manners, and go with the flow. List three times when extreme conformity and
rigidity can lead to problems, and describe the kinds of problems that can
result.
Essay Questions
1.
It seems hard to believe now, but the architecture of what we now view
as public housing projects was considered the key to a brave, new world of new
futures for people who were previously living in crime-ridden squalor. When and how did the dream go awry? Provide two examples.
2.
Alison and Peter Smithson were British architects who argued that it was
absurd to falsify reality and to try to make housing projects as replicas of
old, “classic” buildings. They thought
that things should be brut (French
for raw) and that instead of
constructing fake Victorians, or replicas of gothic cathedrals, one should
emphasize the “truth of the materials.”
They thought it was best to let the actual materials--the beams, the
glass, the supports, the vents--be exposed to the viewer. Their architectural style came to be known as
the “New Brutalism” and was eventually attacked for being ugly. What do you think of the debate? Are you an admirer of modern architecture? Why or why not?
Read and Respond
Urban Planning
in the Twentieth Century: Utopian or Dystopian?
The authors argue that the attack on the
World Trade Center was an attack on modernism and an example of “Le Corbusier’s early twentieth-century modernist vision:
rigidly geometrical towers, floating above a superblock,
erasing the 'clutter' and complexity of the street and replacing it with a
breathtakingly 'pure' and rational geometry.”
Le Corbusier and other architects argue
that urban planning will create better living conditions--constructed
utopias. Roehampton--the
Alton East and Alton West estates--are an example. http://www.open2.net/modernity/3_19_frame.htm
Alison and Peter Smithson countered and built upon Le Corbusier’s
utopianism. They pointed to a few
spectacular failures. http://www.open2.net/modernity/3_12_frame.htm
“Belonging
is a human need,” they pointed
out. Their approach is detailed
here. http://www.open2.net/modernity/4_7.htm
Essay Question
If you were commissioned
to design an urban renovation project for your city or town, how would you
begin? What would your process be,
step-by-step? Would you adhere to the
tenets of “new urbanism” or would you step back and revisit LeCorbusier
or Smithson? Describe the factors that
influenced your decisions.
Destinations
Peter Smithson After the Rebellion. http://www.architecturemag.com/jan00/culture/culture.asp
New
Brutalism.
http://www.xrefer.com/entry.jsp?xrefid=498956
An
example.
http://www.open2.net/modernity/3_9_frame.htm
The philosophy--“truth to the materials” and “raw, without romanticism”. http://www.open2.net/modernity/4_15.htm
Robert Steuteville.
The New Urbanism: an alternative to
modern, automobile-oriented planning and development. http://www.newurbannews.com/AboutNewUrbanism.html
Congress
for the New Urbanism.