University Bulletin
Undergraduate Degree Programs
GEOG 427
(US;IL)
Urban Historical Geography (3) Study of the development and transformation of the historical urban built environment.
GEOG 427
GEOG 427 Urban Historical Geography (3)
(US;IL)
(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements.
Close up, cities can be seen as sets of buildings - some that are lived in, some that are places of work, and others that are places of cultural celebration - and the streetscapes created by these sets of buildings can be decoded as a palimpsest of the past. Likewise, the streets, lanes and alleys between buildings provide a morphological database that help in the analysis of the historical transformations. Seen at a more distant scale, cities are also nodes - centers for surrounding regional trading systems, and partners in national and global trading systems - that have evolved over a set of decades or even centuries.
This course offers a window on such multiple frames on the urban past. We will explore a sample of cities; some European, others African and Asian, as well as from the Americas. Imperialism and its associated colonial mercantile practices meant that variants of European urbanism were mapped on to other parts of the world where they often create hybrid forms of cities over time. In the industrial era, new relations between cities and the countryside emerged, as new forms of production developed and as resources were harnessed from a more global hinterland; radically different types of cities emerged in the past two centuries.
The assessment devices in this class consist of several short exercises, some data driven and others related to summaries of readings, and two research exercises on an aspect of a city or cities of your choice, for which you will be develop three drafts.
Note : Class size, frequency of offering, and evaluation methods will vary by location and instructor. For these details check the specific course syllabus.