US/SO 375 METROPOLITIAN DEVELOPMENT: URBAN STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE IES Abroad Berlin

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1 US/SO 375 METROPOLITIAN DEVELOPMENT: URBAN STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE IES Abroad Berlin DESCRIPTION: Berlin is justifiably recognized as a laboratory of modern European urban history, a city whose evolution has been profoundly affected by the principal political, economic, and aesthetic trends of the last two hundred years. In this course we shall examine Berlin's complicated and often turbulent development, taking advantage of our presence in the city to explore its urban landscape firsthand, and ask whether the forces that continue to forge Berlin's identity are the same that have been at work in other European and American cities. How does the European model of urban development compare to various American or global models? Since Berlin is a relatively young city by European standards, can it be held up as an example of "old world" urbanism, or does it in fact have more in common with American cities than some might think? Students in the course will visit many of the city's historic sites, and in class compare them to urban prototypes in Paris, St. Petersburg, New York, Los Angeles, Istanbul, Lagos, and Dubai among other cities. How have absolutist policies, whether monarchic or totalitarian, influenced the city? How have periods of powerful economic growth, whether spurred by industrial revolution or the "economic miracle" of the post-war Wirtschaftswunder, determined urban growth? How have the 20th century's primary competing ideological systems democratic market capitalism and Communism altered the course of urban development in Europe? Berlin offers a unique opportunity to examine these questions in the one location where they have all played a vital role. The course will devote time to important urban issues, both historical and actual: the relationship of municipal and state government in city planning (the transformation of Paris under Baron Haussmann and Napoleon III in the 19th century; the works programs of Robert Moses in New York City in the 20th century); the role of the automobile in the propagation of suburban sprawl; the impact of new technology on urban development; the city as an imperial or (post-)colonial power center; demographic challenges (shrinking versus expanding cities); the emergence of specific urban movements (Garden City, modernism, postmodernism, "Critical Reconstruction," "New Urbanism"); contrasting patterns of racism, poverty, and immigration; security in an age of terrorism; and the impact of global warming. CREDITS: 3 credits CONTACT HOURS: 45 hours LANGUAGE OF INSTRUCTION: English PREREQUISITES: None METHOD OF PRESENTATION: In-class slide lectures and discussions Course-related trips One week-long excursion to Paris or St. Petersburg Moodle will be used to enhance students' learning experiences. REQUIRED WORK AND FORM OF ASSESSMENT: Participation: (20%) Students must complete the assigned readings, participate in class discussions, and attend all site visits. Midterm exam: (25%) A mid-term exam will be based on the readings and lectures. Travel Assignment: (15%) Written or alternative media project based on Paris or St. Petersburg excursion Paper: (40%) Topic to be assigned separately (2.500 words) LEARNING OUTCOMES: By the end of the course students will be: Familiar with the historical framework of Berlin's modern urban evolution and with the theoretical concepts that have influenced that evolution. Able to understand the varieties of urban transformation in other cities having used Berlin as a comparative model. Aware of the principal forces affecting contemporary urban development.

2 ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: Students are expected to abide by the IES Academic Integrity Code. Assigned papers need to be properly and amply footnoted where appropriate, with all sources attributed (Wikipedia is not a credible source). Poorly written and grammatically sloppy papers will be judged more severely. ATTENDANCE POLICY: Attendance at all IES Abroad courses is mandatory. Absences will only be excused if you present a doctor's note. Unexcused absences will negatively affect the grade for Participation. Excessive absenteeism will negatively affect the final grade. Field trips are part of class. CONTENT: Session Content Assignments Absolutism and the Origins of the Modern European City: Berlin and St. Petersburg ( ) Session (courserelated Session 3 (in Session 4 (in Session 5 (in Karl Friedrich Schinkel s Mitte Defining the Parvenupolis Course-related trips: Neue Wache ( ), Schauspielhaus ( ), Altes Museum ( ), Friedrich- Werder Kirche ( ), Bauakademie (mockup, ) Baroque Legacies Classical Impulses The Master Planner in an Age of Revolution: Berlin and Paris, ( ) Industrial Revolution, the Mietskaserne, and the Expanding City Haussmannization in Paris The Birth of Modernism: Berlin ( ) - Julius Posener, Schinkel s English Diary, in From Schinkel to the Bauhaus, The Architectural Association, Paper Number 5 (London: Lund Humphries, 1972). - W. Bruce Lincoln, prologue from Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia (New York: Basic Books, 2002). - Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life ( Die Großstadt und das Geistesleben, Dresden, 1903) in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, Kurt H. Wolff, trans. and ed. (New York, 1950). - Walter Benjamin, Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century, in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, Peter Demetz, ed. (New York: Schocken, 1986).

3 Session 6 (in Session (courserelated Session 9 (in Session 10: Session 16 Session 11 Session (courserelated Session (courserelated The Weimar Urban Avant-Garde The Siedlung and the Refutation of 19th Century Living Bruno Taut, Hugo Häring Onkel-Toms-Hütte Siedlung ( ) Models of Total Urbanism: Berlin and New York City ( ) Hitler, Speer, and the Vision of Germania Mid-Term Exam Skyscraper and Expressway Building the Empire State Postwar Polemics: Berlin and Los Angeles ( ) Tabula rasa? Planning in Ideological Opposition Socialist Utopias Stalinallee housing and commercial buildings on the Karl- Marx-Allee From Center to Edge to Center Kulturforum Mies van der Rohe, Neue Nationalgalerie ( ); Hans Scharoun, Philharmonie - Barbara Miller Lane, The New Architecture and the Vision of a New Society, in Architecture and Politics in Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968). - Nike Bätzner, Housing Projects of the 1920s: A Laboratory of Social Ideas and Formal Experiment, in City of Architecture/Architecture of the City: Berlin , Thorsten Scheer, J. P. Kleihues, Paul Kahlfeldt, eds. (Berlin: Nicholai, 2000). - Albert Speer, The Greatest Assignment, in Inside the Third Reich, Memoirs (New York: Macmillan, 1970). - Robert A. Caro, Wait until the Evening, in The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, (New York: Vintage, 1975). - Josef Paul Kleihues, From the Destruction to the Critical Reconstruction of the City: Urban Design in Berlin after 1945, in Berlin-New York: Like and Unlike: Essays on Architecture and Art from 1870 to the Present, Josef Paul Kleihues and Christina Rathgeber eds. (New York: Rizzoli, 1993). - Alan Balfour, Kultur Forum, in Berlin: The Politics of Order, (New York: Rizzoli, 1990).

4 Session 17 Session 18 Session 19 Courserelated trip Session 20 Session 21 Session 22 ( ), Staatsbibliothek (1967); Potsdamerplatz (Renzo Piano, et al.). Dissolution and Defense in the City of Angels Critical Reconstruction and other Controlling Strategies New World Order? Bloat, Shrink, or Sprawl: Istanbul, Dubai, Lagos (1989 to the present) The Wages of Globalization: Instant City and Megacity Paris (Fall) or St. Petersburg (Spring) The Continental Cusp and the Expanding Periphery: Istanbul The Future of Water New York City vs. Las Vegas Millennial Challenges - William Fulton, The Collapse of the Growth Machine, in The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). - Hans Stimmann, introduction to The City in Black: The Physionomy of Central Berlin (Berlin: Nicolai, 2002). Readings: - Mike Davis, Sand, Fear, and Money in Dubai, in Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism (New York: The New Press, 2007). - George Packer, The Megacity: Decoding the chaos of Lagos, in The New Yorker, November 13, Thomas L. Friedman, Today s Date: 1 E.C.E. Today s Weather: Hot, Flat, and Crowded, in Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0 (New York: Picador, 2009). ADDITIONAL REQUIRED READING: Carl E. Schorske, The Idea of the City in European Thought: Voltaire to Spengler, in The Historian and the City, Oscar Handlin and John Burchard, eds. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1963). RECOMMENDED READINGS: Alan Balfour, Berlin: The Politics of Order, (New York: Rizzoli, 1990). Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York: Harper and Row, 1968). David Clay Large, Berlin (New York: Basic Books, 2000). W. Bruce Lincoln, Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia (Basic Books, 2002). Lewis Mumford, The City in History (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1961). Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1985).

5 Joseph Rykwert, The Seduction of Place: The City in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Pantheon, 2000).