CCS WEEKEND COLLEGE SPRING 2011
SOC 308 CITIES AND SUBURBS
INSTRUCTOR: Prof. James Dickinson
OFFICE: Dept. of Sociology, Fine Arts Building, Room 236
PHONE: 609-895-5464
Email: Dickinson@rider.edu
OFFICE HOURS: Saturdays 11am to 12 noon. Or by appointment
anytime (please phone).
PLEASE NOTE: ASSIGNMENT FOR FIRST
CLASS MEETING IS INCLUDED AT END OF
SYLLABUS
COURSE OUTLINE
Most Americans, and an increasing percentage of the world’s
population, now live in cities and surrounding suburban areas.
This course explores the history, development, structure, and
problems of our urban-suburban world. In particular, we will
approach cities and suburbs as spatial distributions of people,
activities and problems. The focus is on the rise and fall of
American cities and suburbs in the context of global
development. The course will draw on the experiences of nearby
cities such as Trenton, Newark, Camden, Philadelphia and New
York, as well as the range of old and new suburban developments
also at hand nearby. At every turn we will be concerned to
integrate the visual (what we see around us) with the
sociological (the ideas and data that sociologists have
developed about cities and suburbs).
Among the topics we will explore in this course (not
necessarily in this order) are: perceptions of cities and
suburbs; cities and suburbs as spatial distributions of people,
activities and problems; the origin of cities and civilization;
varieties of pre-modern cities including Roman, medieval and
mercantile cities; the rise and fall of industrial cities;
growth and transformation of suburbia and suburban cities;
sprawl vs neighborhood in American life; social experience of
suburban and urban space: drive-in culture, shopping and
artificiality; urban blight, gangs, drugs, violence and the
problems of the contemporary city; urban aesthetics including
graffiti, murals, billboards and folk art; architecture of the
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built environment such as malls and office parks, strip
development, ruins, entropic zones, “McMansions,” fortification,
and enclaves. We conclude with a discussion of the urbanization
process and nature of cities in the developing, or Third, world.
REQUIRED TEXTS:
*Mark Hutter Experiencing Cities (2007). Hereafter referred
to as HUTTER. Available in the bookstore. You will need to get
your own copy.
*Andres Duany, et al, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl
and the Decline of the American Dream. Hereafter referred to as
SUBURBAN NATION. Available in the bookstore. You will need to
get your own copy.
PLUS various ARTICLES and HANDOUTS supplied by the
instructor. Typically an * = a required reading from texts or a
handout.
PLUS any VIDEO shown in class or assigned for individual
library viewing becomes a required text.
RECOMMENDED READINGS:
There are many great studies of urbanism and urbanization.
Below are a few important titles that help explain the American
city.
Grady Clay, How to Read the American City
Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier
Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of
Suburbia.
These are available in the library. A separate bibliography
and resources list will be supplied during the course of the
semester for your interest.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
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There will be a mid-term and final exam, each worth 30%;
these will test your knowledge of the assigned readings,
lectures, and other materials covered in class. A written
project including a short presentation to class will constitute
30% of the grade; details to be supplied later in class.
Attendance and participation make up the remaining 10%.
To summarize:
Mid-term exam
Final exam
Project & presentation
Attendance, participation
30%
30%
30%
10%
CLASS DATES:
Our class meets on the following Saturdays from 12.45 to
3.45pm:
January 29th
February 12th and 26th
March 12 and 26th
April 9th and 16th and 30th
May 7th (final exam)
ATTENDANCE:
Regular attendance for the full class period is expected
and required. Absences will have a negative effect on your final
grade. Required articles and handouts will be distributed in
class so if you are not present you will not receive them in a
timely manner and be unaware of assignments for future classes.
Unless you attend class regularly, you will soon lose touch with
the topics, readings, assignments, and project deadlines.
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TOPICS AND READINGS:
Please note: this is NOT a weekly semester schedule, but a
list of topics in the approximate order in which we hopefully
will address some of them. Required readings are indicated with
an *; those not in the course texts will be supplied to you.
Other readings listed are recommended readings, not required.
1. Introduction. Terms and concepts for the analysis of the
urban world. Urban and suburban areas as spatial
distributions of people, activities and problems; as
physical places, sites of social interaction, and as
cultural/symbolic landscapes. The first, second and third
urban revolutions.
Readings:
*HUTTER, chapter 1 (see first class assignment below)
2. The first urban revolution. Origins of cities and
civilization. Early monumental cities. The Greek polis and
the Roman city.
Readings:
*HUTTER chapter 2
*Dickinson, “Metropolis” in Blackwell Encyclopedia of
Sociology
Recommended:
Childe, “The Urban Revolution” in The City Reader.
Mumford, “From Megapolis to Necropolis” from The City
History.
In
Jones, “Attica and Athens: The Built Environment,” chap 3
of Ancient Greece.
Video: “Roman City”
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3. The second urban revolution. Capitalism and the city. From
mercantile to industrial cities. The rural-urban
transition. The Chicago school of urban sociology.
Readings:
*HUTTER chapter 3 and 4
*Burgess, “Growth of the city”
Recommended:
Frederick Engels The Condition of the Working Class in
England
4. Reforming the industrial city. Urban planning and the
utopian visions of Howard, Le Corbusier, Wright and Moses
(that’s Robert).
Readings:
*HUTTER chapter 5
5. Urban imagery and the visual culture of cities.
Architecture and the built environment. Cities in art and
as art. Billboards, graffiti, murals.
Readings:
*HUTTER chapters 7 and 8
*Slide show: Philadelphia and Trenton murals and graffiti
6. Problems of the contemporary city. Globalization,
suburbanization and decentralization. Urban dereliction and
blight. From ghetto to hyperghetto.
Readings:
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*HUTTER chapter 10 and 11
*Dickinson, “Entropic Zones”
*Vergara, “Guide to our Ghettos”
*Anderson, “Drugs, violence and street crime”
*--------, “Down Germantown Avenue”
Video: “New American Ghetto”
Website: “Invincible Cities”
7. Suburbanization of America. From classic suburb to the
suburban metropolis to de-centered sprawl. Suburbia as a
lifestyle and ideal. New urbanism and the reform of
suburbia.
Readings:
*HUTTER chapter 16
*SUBURBAN NATION chapters 1 and 2
*Jackson, “Drive-in Culture” From Crabgrass Frontier
*“The Suburbs” (video)
Recommended:
Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of
Suburbia.
Dolores Hayden, Field Guide to Sprawl
Grady Clay, How to Read the American City
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8. Consumption and the urban form. From main street to
shopping mall. Decline and rebirth of downtown. Lndscapes
of production to landscapes of consumption.
Readings:
*HUTTER chapter 14
Gruen reading, “Corruption of the shopping mall”
9. Cities and Disaster: Wars, Floods, Heat Ws, Earthquakes,
Riots, and Terror. Katrina and 9/11.
Readings:
*HUTTER chapter 17
*Eric Klinenberg, “Race, Place and Vulnerability” chap. 2
of Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago(2002)
*Dickinson, New Orleans/Katrina package and slide show
Recommended:
Dickinson, “Still Swept Away: New Orleans Six Months After
Katrina” Designer/builder (March-April,
2006)
---------, “Gulf Coast Blues: FEMA’s Botched Plans”
Designer/builder (Sept-Oct, 2006)
Jones-Deweever and Hartmann, “Abandoned Before The
Storms” chap 5 of There is No Such Thing as A Natural
Disaster, edited by Hartman and Squires (2006)
Lawrence Vale and Thomas Campanella, editors, The Resilient
City: How Modern Cities Recover From Disaster (2005)
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10. The third urban revolution. Cities in the developing
world. Global slums and surplus humanity.
Readings:
*HUTTER chapter 18
*Mike Davis, “Planet of Slums” New Left Review
Recommended:
Robert Neuwirth, “Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters,
New Urban World” Designer/builder
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Mike Davis, “Fear and Money in Dubai” New Left Review,
No. 41 Sept-Oct 2006.
Isabel Hilton, “Monasteries into Motorways” LRB, Sept
2006
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SEE NEXT PAGE FOR FIRST CLASS ASSIGNMENT!
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SEE THIS PAGE FOR FIRST CLASS ASSIGNMENT!
ASSIGNMENT FOR FIRST CLASS MEETING
DUE January 29th 2011
There are two parts.
PART 1.
*Please read chapter 1 of HUTTER. From your reading:
*Identify/define: urbanization; urban growth; urban transition;
urbanism
*What are the main urban revolutions noted by Hutter?
*Identify/define: city; civilization; urban. What does MUMFORD
have to say about cities and human culture?
*Identify/define: Micro and marco approaches to the study of
cities. What factors does each approach/level focus on?
*What is symbolic interactionism? How might it inform the study
of cities and urban life? Illustrate with reference to ONE
author discussed by Hutter.
TYPE UP YOUR RESULTS, DOUBLE SPACED, NO MORE THAN TWO PAGES
PART 2.
*Family and place. For each of the following three generations
of your family including YOUR GENERATION, YOUR PARENTS, YOUR
GRANDPARENTS (choose just one side if you like) do the
following:
*Identify (by name) the place where born, raised and lived.
Describe nature of community: rural community? Small town? City?
Go to Google and find population for place-then and now.
Indicate any movement/migration for each generation, i.e. if
place where born, raised, lived/worked, or retired varies during
lifetime.
TYPE UP YOUR RESULTS AS A CHART, OR SIMILAR, IN ONE PAGE.
BE PREPARED TO DISCUSS AND HAND IN YOUR RESULTS FOR BOTH PART 1
AND 2!
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