URBN 1101a / AMST 1197a / ARCH 2600a / HIST 1125a / HSAR 3219a, American Architecture and Urbanism  Elihu Rubin

An introduction to the field of American architecture and urbanism: the study of buildings, architects, designs, styles, and urban landscapes, viewed in economic, political, social, and cultural contexts. Organized chronologically, from pre-Colonial times to the present, as well as thematically, the course studies the formation and meaning of the built environment in America. The many topics encountered along the way include the public and private investment in the built environment; history of housing in America; transportation and infrastructure; architectural practice; and the social and political nature of city building and urban change. Attention also paid to the transnational nature of American architecture—the role of colonialism, the global exchange of architectural ideas, and the international careers of some architects. We will take advantage of our local setting, New Haven, as a cross-section of American architectural and urban history and a storehouse of key examples of building types, urban landscapes, and architectural styles. Upon completion, students should be expected to grasp the basic periods, trends, and processes in American architectural history and their connection to urban patterns. This course aims to give students the tools to appreciate and interpret the built environments that surround them, from impressive monuments to ordinary structures  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

URBN 1102a / ARCH 2601a, Introduction to Urban Design  Elihu Rubin

This course provides an introduction to the theory and practice of urban design within the context of the broader fields of urbanism and urban history. That is to say that the design of the built environment will be considered in relation to patterns and practices of urban life and culture, and as a response to historical transformations of the political, economic and technological forces that have shaped cities since antiquity, but especially since the industrial revolution. The course will attempt to negotiate between the broader landscape suggested by these forces and the specifics of particular cities at critical moments in their development and the projects which represent the efforts of those cities and their designers to come to terms with the dynamics of urban change. Thus the lectures will include monographic treatments of specific cities and exemplary urban design projects, as well as the general issues and principles of city design suggested by those case studies, including consideration of their implications for contemporary practice. The weekly classes will provide opportunities for the introduction of supplementary examples from the wider field of international urbanism, as well as introducing techniques of urban representation and analysis relevant to the assignments and to student work in studios. Classes will also provide time for discussion of readings and lectures and issues of current interest.    HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

URBN 1300b / ARCH 1600b, Introduction to Urban Studies  Ana Duran

An introduction to key topics, research methods, and practices in urban studies, an interdisciplinary field of inquiry and action rooted in the experience of cities. As physical artifacts, the advent of large cities have reflected rapid industrialization and advanced capitalism. They are inseparable from the organization of economic life; the flourishing of cultures; and the formation of identities. They are also places where power is concentrated and inequalities are (re)produced. Debates around equity are filtered through urban environments, where struggles over jobs, housing, education, mobility, public health, and public safety are front and center. The course is organized as a colloquium with numerous guests. Accessible entirely online, there will also be live, in-person events, with social distancing and face masks/shields, available to students in New Haven.  HU, SO  0 Course cr
HTBA

* URBN 3201a / ARCH 3308a, Reimagining the City: Mediums of Speculation  Joyce Hsiang

This course examines how “the city” has been deployed not only as a subject of speculation, but also as a medium for reimagining worlds. This seminar studies and explores the ways architects, urbanists, designers, writers, artists, and filmmakers have reimagined the city to uncover, probe, and critique ideas, ideals and values about urbanism and the built environment contained and imbricated by these representations. It focuses on the architecture of the built environment depicted in paintings, photographs, films, drawings, maps, models, urban plans, virtual reality machines, and games as well as literary fiction. The course is structured according to various mediums of speculation reimagining the city, montaging a visual history of urbanism and architectural theories about the city. The course toggles between close reading/viewing and analysis of creative forms of writing, art, architecture, and film, and a series of in-class workshops in support of creative exercises. Discussion of assigned readings and course materials is interspersed with organized screenings, viewings of collections, and visits to archives. Workshops engage a range of creative mediums to provide students opportunities and tools to experiment with and develop methods of speculation as they critique and create their own re-imaginings of the city.
T 1:30pm-3:25pm

URBN 3301b / BLST 1964b / PLSC 2232b, The Politics of "The Wire": HBO's Portrayal of the American City  Allison Harris

This class uses HBO's groundbreaking series "The Wire" to investigate cities, their problems, and their politics. We watch all five seasons of the show as social scientists and use it to learn about important social scientific concepts and theories, and apply those theories to such phenomena as the politics of crime, policing, and local elections. Each week, the assigned readings—articles and book excerpts from political science as well as other social sciences—highlight the social scientific concepts displayed in the assigned episodes and provide context for lectures. All of the assignments work together to expose students to social science, how social science is conducted, and how political science can help us better understand the world around us.  SO  0 Course cr
HTBA

* URBN 3303a / ARCH 3102a, History of Landscape in Western Europe and the United States: Antiquity to 1950  Warren Fuermann

This course is designed as an introductory survey of the history of landscape architecture and the wider, cultivated landscape in Western Europe and the United States from the Ancient Roman period to mid-twentieth century America. Included in the lectures, presented chronologically, are the gardens of Ancient Rome, medieval Europe, the early and late Italian Renaissance, 17th century France, 18th century Britain, 19th century Britain and America with its public and national parks, and mid-twentieth century America. The course focuses each week on one of these periods, analyzes in detail iconic gardens of the period, and places them within their historical and theoretical context.  HU  RP
Th 1:30pm-3:25pm

* URBN 3306b / ARCH 3601b, Difference and the City  Justin Moore

Difference and the City is a transdisciplinary, cross-institutional hybrid seminar examining how the built environment shapes—and can positively transform—social, cultural, economic, environmental, and spatial inequities. Drawing on student-selected case studies from New York to Nairobi, Baltimore to Buenos Aires, and beyond, the course explores interconnected urban challenges: housing access and community development, food systems and economic inclusion, climate migration and environmental injustice, mobility infrastructure, and the contested politics of public space, heritage, and belonging. Students with backgrounds or interests in architecture, landscape, urban design, planning, preservation, public policy, and allied fields collaborate through seminar discussions, analytic exercises, and workshops to develop counter-stories that surface overlooked actors, buried histories, and unrealized possibilities. The heart of the course is an independent final project—a research paper or design project tailored to each student's background and interests—that moves from analysis to proposition, advancing new knowledge and ideas for more just, inclusive, and resilient places.
HTBA

* URBN 3307b / EVST 2290b, Geographic Information Systems  Jill Kelly

A practical introduction to the nature and use of geographic information systems (GIS) in environmental science and management. Applied techniques for the acquisition, creation, storage, management, visualization, transformation, analysis, and synthesis of cartographic data in digital form.
T 9:25am-11:20am

* URBN 3312a / EVST 4490a / HIST 3749a / HSHM 4490a / HUMS 3446a, Critical Data Visualization: History, Theory, and Practice  Bill Rankin

Critical analysis of the creation, use, and cultural meanings of data visualization, with emphasis on both the theory and the politics of visual communication. Seminar discussions include close readings of historical data graphics since the late eighteenth century and conceptual engagement with graphic semiology, ideals of objectivity and honesty, and recent approaches of feminist and participatory data design. Course assignments focus on the research, production, and workshopping of students’ own data graphics; topics include both historical and contemporary material. No prior software experience is required; tutorials are integrated into weekly meetings. Basic proficiency in standard graphics software is expected by the end of the term, with optional support for more advanced programming and mapping software.  HU
T 1:30pm-3:25pm

* URBN 3315b / ARCH 3103b, Revolutionary Cities: Protest, Rebellion and Representation in Modern Urban Space  Alan Plattus

Cities have always been hotbeds of radical ideas and actions. Their cafes and taverns, drawing rooms and universities have been incubators of new ideas, revolutionary ideologies and debate, while their streets and public spaces have been the sites of demonstrations, protests, and uprisings. Since cities are key nodes in larger networks of trade and cultural exchange, these local events have often had a global audience and impact. This seminar explores the interaction of urban space and event, and the media and technologies of revolutionary representation, through case studies of particular cities at transformational moments in their development. These begin with Boston in the 1760s and 1770s, and may include Paris in 1789, 1830, 1848, 1871 and again in 1968, St. Petersburg in 1917, Beijing in 1949 and again in 1989, Havana in 1959, Prague, Berlin and Johannesburg and other cities in 1989, Cairo in 2011, Hong Kong in 2011-12, 2014 and 2019, and other urban sites of the Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements. Course work in modern history is recommended.  HU
T 1:30pm-3:25pm

* URBN 3320a / ARCH 2105a / HIST 1755a / HSHM 2390a, Reckoning Environmental Uncertainty: A Global History since 1100  Anthony Acciavatti

How have people made decisions about the future when the environment is uncertain? This lecture class provides a global perspective on how societies have tried to understand and live with an unpredictable world. Beginning in 1100, we examine a series of historical episodes when communities faced environmental dangers, uncertain futures, and how they managed risk. Case studies include water and landscape management in the Song Dynasty, navigation across the Pacific Ocean, utopian cities in the Americas, agricultural and urban systems in South Asia, environmental design in West Africa, and the global rise of weather observatories to monitor atmospheric changes. Rather than telling a linear history of progress or decline, the course asks a more fundamental question: how do people claim to know the environment, and how does uncertainty shape that knowledge? Throughout the semester, we examine how different cultures develop their own strategies for understanding a world that has never been entirely predictable. Drawing on the histories of science, technology, architecture, and the environment, students see how debates about risk, planetary health, and expertise have deep historical roots.  HU  0 Course cr
TTh 4pm-5:15pm

* URBN 3321b / ARCG 3122b / NELC 3220b, Urbanism and Urban Society in Ancient Egypt  Nadine Moeller

The aim of this seminar is to challenge prevailing views on Egypt's non-urban past and to investigate Egypt as an early urban society. The emergence of urban features are traced diachronically starting with the Predynastic period up to the disintegration of the powerful Middle Kingdom state into the New Kingdom with its powerful royal cities and up to the urban transformation of the Late Period and Graeco-Roman times. This seminar offers a synthesis of the archaeological data that sheds light on the different facets of urbanism in ancient Egypt and looks at theoretical concepts and models of urbanism more generally, and how they can be applied to ancient societies. Drawing on evidence from recent excavations, the changing settlement patterns are explored by contrasting periods of strong political control against those of decentralization. On a microlevel, the characteristics of households and the layout of domestic architecture are addressed, which are key elements for understanding how society functioned and evolved over time. In addition, settlement patterns provide further insights into the formation of complex society and the role of the state in the urban development of ancient Egypt. Prerequisite: Some background knowledge of ancient Egyptian history is required.  HU
TTh 4pm-5:15pm

* URBN 3606b / ARCH 3309b, Greening the City–Urban Forestry, Urbanism and the Climate Crisis  Jacob Koch

This Urban Lab explores greening as a core urbanistic strategy of cities, historically and contemporaneously. We look at the who - exploring stakeholder mapping and power analysis; the where - data-driven and community-driven efforts to prioritize where to work; the how - through the lens of public outreach and engagement techniques and tools, and operations and maintenance needs of urban infrastructure; and the why - the many social, environmental, and economic benefits of trees and other greening solutions.   Trees have been planted in cities for thousands of years.  The history of tree planting in Asian cities dates at least to the Zhou Dynasty (1046–256 BC), which documents trees as solutions for flood and erosion control and as tools for ceremonial urban design. In Europe, Amsterdam began systematically planting trees in the 14th century and passed a city law in 1454 prohibiting the cutting down of trees.  Fast forward to 2007 when New York City launched the Million Trees campaign and hundreds of cities globally now have established ambitious tree planting goals to help catalyze public and private resources.  In 2023 the Inflation Reduction Act passed by the U.S. Congress approved $1.5 billion for the U.S. Forest Service to distribute through the Urban and Community Forestry grants program.  This is perhaps the largest-ever investment of public funds into urban forestry, making it a perfect moment for this Urban Lab to investigate the interlinkages in contemporary urbanism between greening and the climate crisis.    1½ Course cr
F 1:30pm-4:30pm

* URBN 3607a / ARCH 3310a, A Post-Extractivist Urban World  Ana Duran

Since the 1970s, historical ecologists have been advocating for the recognition of Indigenous systems of agroecology and “beyond-human settlement” as key to achieving sustainable and abundant futures in Amazonia and beyond. Based on growing scientific evidence of the multiple benefits that these systems offer, the Science Panel for the Amazon, many South American governments, foundations, NGOs and development banks are endorsing the co-design and co-development of communal or community-based sociobioeconomies. This project proposes to contribute design intelligence to this praiseworthy vision by focusing on questions of how the logistical, circulation, production, and innovation hubs of polycultural agroforestry and community-based sociobioeconomies could be represented, projected, and eventually, implemented: where, why, along which routes, and with which biomaterials and construction systems, to serve which communities and contribute to which economies. To achieve specificity of purpose we propose to work with a constellation of stakeholders in Tingo María, Huánuco, Perú: members of existing Andean settler communities, Indigenous communes, the municipal government of Tingo María, a private agroforestry enterprise, the local university, and potential donors of future sociobioeconomies and innovation programs will be included in our workshops and discussions. Priority will be given to urban studies majors  HU  1½ Course cr
F 4pm-5:55pm

* URBN 4900a / ARCH 4900a, Senior Research Colloquium  Kyle Dugdale

Research and writing colloquium for seniors in the Urban Studies and History, Theory, and Criticism tracks. Under guidance of the instructor and members of the Architecture faculty, students define their research proposals, shape a bibliography, improve research skills, and seek criticism of individual research agendas. Requirements include proposal drafts, comparative case study analyses, presentations to faculty, and the formation of a visual argument. Guest speakers and class trips to exhibitions, lectures, and special collections encourage use of Yale's resources.
T 1:30pm-3:25pm

* URBN 4901b / ARCH 4901b, Senior Project  Kyle Dugdale

An essay or project in the student's area of concentration. Students in the history, theory, and criticism track or in the urban studies track pursue independent research with an adviser; this project must terminate in a senior essay.
HTBA