ClassInfo - Fall 2021 Public Affairs Classes Taught by Peter Brown

Fall 2021 | PA 5214 Section 001: Planning & Design for the Urban Public Realm (35902)

Instructor(s): Peter Brown
Class Component:: Lecture
Credits:: 1.5 Credits
Grading Basis:: A-F only
Instructor Consent:: No Special Consent Required
Instruction Mode:: In Person Term Based
Enrollment Requirements:: Graduate Student
Times and Locations:: Regular Academic Session

09/17/2021 - 11/05/2021

Fri 09:00AM - 11:45AM

UMTC, West Bank

Hubert H Humphrey Center 184
Enrollment Status:: Open (11 of 15 seats filled)
Also Offered:: Fall 2021

Course Catalog Description:

The Great Inversion, or what former Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak called "the flight to the city," has been ongoing for two decades, and to preserve and enhance the quality of life in our cities, we must continue to invest in our urban public realm. Cities must maintain and improve older parks, plazas and streets, but they must also provide new public spaces in developing areas that never had them before - waterfronts, industrial sites, rail yards, and acres of surface parking. Perhaps most important yet easily overlooked is the re-envisioning of the public right-of-way - the street - as a place that accommodates not just cars but multiple transportation modes including buses, rail, bicycles, and scooters and other forms of personal transport, all integrated into an accessible, pedestrian-friendly, safe, and green environment. The greening of city streets is critical for the creation of lush and livable places while also producing social, economic, and environmental benefits. Since the start of the Covid 19 pandemic in March 2020, our collective experience of the urban public realm and its meaning and value to us have changed dramatically. Our use of public places has increased as parkways once dominated by cars were closed off and filled with pedestrians, cyclists, skateboarders, roller skaters, roller skiers, and people on all other sorts of wheeled conveyances. Park spaces that were once often largely empty filled with people getting exercise, enjoying nature, visiting playgrounds, meeting friends, social-distance dating, taking walking happy hours, having picnics, playing spike ball, hula-hooping, and in the case of the homeless, camping out to avoid the dangers of shelters, to socially distance themselves, and in some cases, both. Following the May 2020 death of George Floyd in police custody, our experience of the public realm changed again to include protests, marches, riots, property damage, the creation of new public art, the erection of new monuments,

Class Notes:

Class runs from 09/17/2021 to 11/05/2021. http://classinfo.umn.edu/?brow1804+PA5214+Fall2021

Class Description:

The purpose of this course is to help planners, designers, and other city builders come to understand the opportunities and challenges of project implementation through the lens of a specific project type: The Urban Public Realm Project. The course integrates theory and practice into a framework for understanding the experience of public places in our lives and our own roles in creating those places

Who Should Take This Class?:

This course is open to all city builders including students of planning, public policy, architecture, landscape architecture, historic preservation, and business. This is a graduate level course but the instructor will consider permission requests from undergraduates.

Learning Objectives:

The course integrates theory and practice into a framework for understanding the experience of public places and the role of planning and design in the implementation of urban public realm projects - from inception through funding, design, construction, start-up, and ongoing operations. Students will pursue the following three objectives (with thanks to Alfred North Whitehead and his "Rhythm of Learning"):

Romance: Develop a general interest in and an understanding of the urban public realm as an idea and as a physical and social experience and learn how to evaluate the character and quality of different types of public spaces.

Precision: Develop the tools and skills required to analyze how urban public realm projects and places are created by collecting and summarizing information such as objectives, budgets, timelines, narratives, and organizational charts that, together, explain the "who, what, where, why, when, and how" of public realm production, maintenance, and use.

Generalization: Develop your own theory of the urban public realm and apply it across a broad range of urban development ideas and projects.

Grading:

Grading

Assignment #1: Response Paper - Your experience of place 30%

Assignment #2: Analysis Paper - How was it created? 30%

Assignment #3: Final Paper - Your Theory of the Urban Public Realm 30%

Participation: 10%

TOTAL 100%

Exam Format:

No Exam

Class Format:

The instructor will present (asynchronously and in class) short lectures, tutorials, and case studies on background topics such as project economics, design and construction, stakeholder engagement, and politics. The instructor will facilitate class discussions of the readings, current relevant news, and brief individual student presentations of papers. For weeks 2 and 4 (and later weeks, weather permitting) we will take walking tour of the urban public realm in downtown Minneapolis, stopping along the way to meet guests and discuss the readings for that week. Coursework will include three graded assignments that will build upon one another. Each of the assignments will be an individual paper of 600-800 words plus graphics. Illustrate your paper with a plan, photos, and other graphics as appropriate to explain your thinking and discuss ideas from several of the readings. The first paper will be based upon your own personal experience of a public place, the second will be an analysis of how a place was created, and the third will summarize your personal theory of the urban public realm.

Workload:

There will be 50-75 pages of reading every week plus asynchronous content including video lectures by the instructor, recorded Ted Talks, and etc.

Textbooks:

https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/35902/1219

Syllabus:

http://classinfo.umn.edu/syllabi/brow1804_PA5214_Fall2021.pdf

Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:

7 July 2021

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