Urban Systems

Abstract

A combination of lectures and exercises will provide the tools to understand the landscape systems that structure and support the urban condition. The course uses the street tree as analytic device to investigate relationships between the territory and the city, and the surface and subgrade.

Objective

Students will learn how the territory, climate and geology create potentials and constraints for urbanization patterns. By looking closely at the city as a lively entity, students will be to bring new perspectives to their design practice. By emphasizing the connections between design decisions and ecological dynamics, students will learn to think relationally about complex urban issues. And lastly, the course emphasizes the importance of collaboration between landscape architects and other disciplines as a necessity to address the complex issues that face our cities today. By providing examples of successful and unsuccessful collaborations, the course models how students can be effective collaborators in practice.

Content

The course features a series of inputs that provide tools to understand the complexities of the urban condition from the perspective of living systems such as soil and vegetation. These lectures critically address key topics in contemporary discourse, such as the Urban Heat Island effect, increasing biodiversity and carbon capture. These inputs prepare students to develop a rule-based-design exercise exploring the relationship between climate, the soil and the street.

Resources