Instructor:
Neil Hrushowy

Lecture (CCN: 48619) TT 6:00 – 7:30 P 214BWurster

Units: 4

Intent:
The course is about research methods that designers and planning professionals use to analyze and evaluate urban places, be they buildings, transportation routes, or open spaces. The urban environment will be viewed primarily as a social and psychological environment. Evaluation will therefore always be tied to a social and psychological environment. We shall be concerned with who environments are for, who uses them, and the conflicts that can arise between user groups.

We are concerned, as well, with measuring and testing various urban environments in relation to peoples' values and with social interaction as a determinant or response to physical design.

Environmental design and planning is inevitably a form of micro·politics. Evaluation will be seen as a basis for citizen involvement and environmental improvements rather than ends in themselves.

Subject Matter:
The principal topics to be covered will be:

(1) Observing and interpreting an urban environment. Methods of learning about an environment by walking and looking; piecing together clues that tell the history and dynamics of an urban area; when it was built; for whom; the physical, social and economic changes that have taken place; who lives there now; what major issues and problems exist; whether the area will change; and how it might change in the future.
(2) Methods of systematically carrying out environmental field surveys, including interviews and questionnaires, and the collection of relevant secondary data in order to explore and verify what is happening in an environment; how people perceive and feel about it, how they use the environment, what they expect to happen, and who they think is behind it. The method of analysis and reporting of evaluations is a clear, interesting and comprehensible form of communication to professionals and laymen. The emphasis will not be on elaborate data gathering but on relating different sources of information, hypothesizing, testing and articulating recommendations for improvements.
(3) Methods of evaluating the plural structure of the environment; the perceptions, values, and behavior of environmental professionals, managers, clients, the news media, and different population groups as they interact on and within environmental events, projects, and proposals.
(4) Techniques of communicating emerging ideas, designs, plans, and policies from the analysis of environmental situations; the issue and encouragement of citizen involvement and action; the setting of environmental criteria and standards; critique of the status quo.

Teaching Method:
The basic teaching method will be lectures by the instructor and by visitors, group discussions, and case studies carried out by groups of students under supervision of the instructor.
The main workload of the students will be to carry out their own case studies. Students are encouraged to work in small groups. Each student will become an expert in one environment or project by the end of the semester by carrying through a pilot environmental evaluation. There will be suggestions for case studies, and students must make their own choice during the first week of class. Abstracts of previous work in the course are on the course website.

Readings:
This is a field in which there is no single text. There are several books that cover parts of the subject. A short list of readings will accompany each lecture for further reference, and a bibliography will be available. Details later.

Participation:
The course is directed especially at city planners, landscape architects, architects, and transportation planners. Landscape and city planning students will have priority if the class gets too large.

Grading:
Work on case studies as a group 60%
Innovative approaches to analysis 20%
Participation during class time 20%