Theory of City Form: A Free Course from MIT

From MIT’s Julian Beinart comes “The­o­ry of City Form,” which cov­ers the fol­low­ing:

This course cov­ers the­o­ries about the form that set­tle­ments should take and attempts a dis­tinc­tion between descrip­tive and nor­ma­tive the­o­ry by exam­in­ing exam­ples of var­i­ous the­o­ries of city form over time. Case stud­ies will high­light the ori­gins of the mod­ern city and the­o­ries about its emerg­ing form, includ­ing the trans­for­ma­tion of the nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry city and its orga­ni­za­tion. Through exam­ples and his­tor­i­cal con­text, cur­rent issues of city form in rela­tion to city-mak­ing, social struc­ture, and phys­i­cal design will also be dis­cussed and ana­lyzed.

Over at MIT’s web­site, you can find a syl­labus for the course, along with lec­ture notes and read­ings. The video lectures–26 in total–can be viewed above, or on YouTube.

“The­o­ry of City Form” will be per­ma­nent­ly housed in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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