University of Alabama at Birmingham 1
Rosie O’Beirne
New Urbanism and Smart Growth:
The Alternative to Urban Sprawl
Summer 2010 -ANTH 371/ DCS 266/ UA 366
July 1 – Aug 2/ Tue and Thu 1:00-5:15/ Heritage Hall Room 551 (not 420)
Instructor:
Office Hours:
Rosie O’Beirne, M.A.
Co-Director, UAB’s Digital Community Studies
www.uab.edu/dcs
Department of History and Anthropology
University of Alabama at Birmingham
205-975-7805
robeirne@uab.edu
I will not have set office hours during the summer
months. However, I am more than happy to meet
with any student to answer questions or to assist
with course materials. Simply email me for an
appointment. I will be working on campus the entire
month of July.
Course Cross-listings
Anthropology 371 (44718)
Digital Community Studies 266 (44381)
Urban Affairs 366 - (44720)
Course Description:
How does neighborhood and community design shape the way individuals interact with one another? How do
communities created by suburban sprawl, marked by strip malls and dominated by the automobile, differ
culturally, environmentally and economically from a traditionally designed neighborhood? This course will
investigate these questions and more as students learn about New Urbanism and Smart Growth - a set of
community design principles aimed at building sustainable communities, walkable neighborhoods and socially
and economically diverse places.
Using Birmingham as our classroom, students will investigate how the principles of New Urbanism and Smart
Growth can be used to create better neighborhoods and a more liveable city. We will look at both urban and
suburban applications of New Urbanist tenets. Using The Smart Growth Manual (Duany, Speck, Lydon), students
will investigate Birmingham’s built environment on various levels: buildings, streetscapes, neighborhoods and the
region. Students will have the opportunity to analyze local New Urbanist communities such as Mt. Laurel,
Trussville Springs and Blount Springs, and evaluate the extent to which New Urbanist principles are successful.
As a class, we will seek to understand how the centrality of a healthy neighborhood structure, both suburban and
urban, can potentially address environmental crisis (such as oil dependent sprawl and global warming), cultural
and social challenges (class and racial segregation), and health related epidemics such as climbing obesity rates.
This course is experiential in nature, where students are encouraged to learn by doing. Students will be required
to actively engage in landscape and visual analysis, and document their experiences and observations in a
course blog. Through unobtrusive observations, participant observation, and service-learning, students are
expected to engage in coursework by critically analyzing and successfully applying course concepts and not
merely rote memorizing a list of definitions.
In addition, this course will serve a larger community purpose. Students will have the opportunity to apply the
principles of diversity, walkability and mixed- use to our very own campus here at UAB. The main assignment of
the course will include student proposals submitted to UAB’s facilities and design division, as well as UAB
administrators and community stakeholders. Student proposals will provide suggestions and analysis of how UAB
can contribute and connect to the city in which it resides.
This course requires students to participate in field outings which will include: Mt. Laurel, Railroad Reservation
Park, Second Avenue and hike in Red Mountain Park - Birmingham’s new 1,100 acre park! You should prepare
yourself to be out in the Alabama summer sun and not always in an air conditioned classroom.
University of Alabama at Birmingham 2
Rosie O’Beirne
Blackboard site: the course website will serve as on-line repository for course readings and assignments.
Your grades will also be posted in Blackboard. Make sure to bookmark the Blackboard Vista log in page:
http://www.uab.edu/academiccourses
Email: I will NOT use the Blackboard Vista email tool to email you. If you need to email me, please use
robeirne@uab.edu. It is helpful to me if you include “New Urbanism” or the course number in the subject
line. Emails that I send out will be sent to your uab.edu account. It is your responsibility to check your email daily.
You can easily check your uab email account by logging into https://mail.ad.uab.edu with your blazer ID and
password.
Plagiarism and Academic Dishonesty: Academic misconduct will not be tolerated in this class including
plagiarism, abetting, cheating, fabrication, misrepresentation. For a detailed description of these offenses go to:
http://www.app.uab.edu/progress_conduct_Griev.html.
Class Courtesy
 Please be on time to class.
 Be prepared to engage in respectful class discussion.
 Laptops should only be used for note-taking purposes only – not for facebook, myspace,
 Cell phones should be turned off during class. NO texting during class.
Grading Requirements (percentages indicate total of final grade)
1. Smart Growth Blog – 70% The majority of the course will be comprised of a variety of classroom and
fieldwork exercises where your observations are documented in a course blog. Assignment details will be
provided in class, and will include a variety of exercises such as investigating a local New Urbanist community
(City as Text) to completing in-class assignments.
2. Presentation and Proposal to UAB Campus Planning– 30%. Assignment details will be given in class.
Required Readings:

Birmingham architect - Jeremy Erdreich’s blog: http://constructbirmingham.wordpress.com/ (submit your
email address to subscribe).

Smart Growth, Andres Duany and Jeff Speck, with Mike Lydon, McGraw Hill 2010. ISBN-10:
0071376755 ISBN-13: 978-0071376754
A selection of optional scanned readings will be available to you on Blackboard:




Macionis and Parrillo , Cities and Urban Life
Rodin, Judith, The University and Urban Revival: Out of the Ivory Tower and Into the Streets
Duany, Andres, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the
Decline of the American Dream
Katz, Peter, The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community
Other Requirements:
 Digital Camera
 A good portion of the coursework in this class will occur outside in the community. You should come prepared
to be in the hot Alabama sun. Useful items include: sun visors or ball caps, sun screen and UMBRELLAS.
Water. Water. Water – lots of it.
University of Alabama at Birmingham 3
Rosie O’Beirne

Transportation – many of our field excursions are within walking distance of the campus. However, there will
be a few occasions where you will need to drive to a destination such as Red Mountain Park and Mt. Laurel.
We will coordinate in class to carpool to these places. If you do own a vehicle, please consider carpooling. If
you do not have transportation, please let me know at the beginning of the class so we can work out
arrangements beforehand.
Class Schedule and Outline –
The following schedule is a rough outline of course content and planned excursions. This schedule is tentative and
subject to change according to class needs and appointments made with community organizations and leaders.
1-Jul
thu
Ideal Community
Development of Cities
Hayden's Landscape Vernacular
Urban-Suburban-Sprawl
Introduction to New Urbanist and Smart Growth Principles
6-Jul
tue
Tour of Mt Laurel - New Urbanist Community Hwy 280
Fieldwork - 280 Sprawl
8-Jul
thu
Smart Growth Building Blocks: Building, Streetscape
Neighborhood, and the Region
Birmingham and UAB History and Landscape
UAB Campus Initiatives
Fieldwork: UAB Campus
13-Jul
tue
City Destinations - what makes a great city
UAB's neighborhood
Fieldwork: 14th Street and Railroad Reservation Park
15-Jul
thu
Field Excursion: City As Text - Visual Analysis and documentation
in selected communities with student teams
20-Jul
tue
Field Excursion - Red Mountain Park Tour
22-Jul
thu
City As Text Presentations
27-Jul
tue
Fieldwork: Second Avenue Tour (downtown urban
redevelopment, third places, public transportation)
Hope VI - Mixed Income Developments
29-Jul
thu
Ideal Community Revisited
Campus Presentations to invited UAB's Campus Planning and
Building Facilities, UAB administrators and community members