URBAN POLICY: SHAPING THE CITY COURSE # HEINZ COLLEGE SPRING 2016

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1 URBAN POLICY: SHAPING THE CITY COURSE # HEINZ COLLEGE SPRING 2016 Instructor: Jane Downing Telephone: Fax: downingj@pghfdn.org Course Time: Tuesday, 6:00 8:50 pm Course Location: Hamburg Hall 1003 Office Hours: By appointment Course Description: This course will examine economic forces and public policies that have shaped modern cities and metropolitan areas in the US and other countries. We will explore government policies contributing to metropolitan form as well as policies in community development, affordable housing, workforce development and the environment designed to mitigate those policies. We will conclude with a discussion of policies to support sustainable urban growth. The course will concentrate on the physical, geographical and built aspects of metro areas, but will also address the relationship between the physical nature and the quality of community that develops, focusing on low-income communities. Guest speakers will provide examples of how selected public policies are implemented in Pittsburgh. Textbooks: Richard LeGates and Frederick Stout, Editors. The City Reader (Sixth Edition). Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley. The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy. Course Objectives: You will be able to identify policies that have shaped the physical environment of metropolitan areas and understand the impact of those policies on low income populations, the role of NGOs as change agents and the importance of civic engagement in a region s quality of life. Assignments and grading: Excerpts from the textbooks and handouts from the instructor contain the required reading for the course. Students will provide reflections on policy issues addressed in the readings for class discussion each week. In Week 3, students will select an urban policy issue to research and provide a written summary of the topic and approach. Week 6, a 15-page essay on the selected policy issue will be due. The essay will include a problem statement with supporting data about why the issue is important; an in-depth description of the selected urban policy; an analysis of its impact on low- income or minority communities. Each student will present a PowerPoint summary of the paper at the last class.

2 Grading for the course will be based on class participation (20%), weekly written reflections on readings (20%), policy paper (40%) and the final presentation (20%). I will assign a 0 if assignments are not turned in, papers are plagiarized or developed for another course. I expect each student to complete written assignments on his/her own. March 15, 2016 Week 1 Course Introduction: Expectations. Class generated list of current urban policy issues. Evolution of cities: setting the context for studying cities/metropolitan areas. March 22, 2016 Week 2 Planning. Public policies as a legitimate government activity. Government structure and functions. Contemporary urban form and the economy. The City Reader Selections: Fishman: Beyond Suburbia: The Rise of the Technoburb, pgs Orfield: Metropolitics and Fiscal Equity, pgs The Metropolitan Revolution: New York: Innovation and the Next Economy, pgs The Urban Development Reader (handout) Gillham: What is Sprawl? pgs Lozano: Density in Communities, or the Most Important Factor in Building Urbanity, pgs March 29, 2016 Week 3 Housing. Overview of U.S housing policy. Geography of opportunity. Factors affecting housing choice. Practical implications of housing policy. The City Reader Selections: UN HABITAT: Key Findings and Messages from the Challenges of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements 2003, pgs Saunders: The Places Where Everything Changes, pgs

3 DeSouza Briggs, Geography of Opportunity. (Handouts) DeSouza Briggs: Introduction & More Pluribus and Less Unum? The Changing Geography of Race and Opportunity, pgs 1-41 Zubrinski Charles: Can We Live Together? Racial Preferences and Neighborhood Outcomes, pgs Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality: Pathways. The Quiet Revolution in Housing Policy. Articles, pgs (handout) WRITING ASSIGNMENT DUE Topic and Approach for Urban Policy Issue April 5, 2016 Week 4 Urban Development. Public sector implementation of economic and housing real estate development policies. Relationship of urban design to quality of development and quality of life. Inner city revitalization. Rightsizing cities vs. growth. Selections from The City Reader Jacobs: The Uses of Sidewalks: Safety, pgs Lynch: The City Image and Its Elements pgs Whyte: The Design of Spaces pgs Project for Public Spaces: What is Place Making? pgs Madanipour, Social Exclusion and Space, Castells, Space of Flow, Space of Places: Materials for a Theory of Urbanism in the Information Age, pgs The Metropolitan Revolution The Rise of Innovation Districts, pgs Steve Rugare and Terry Schwartz, Eds. Cities Growing Smaller. (handout) Schwartz: The Cleveland Land Lab: Experiments for a City in Transition, pgs GUEST SPEAKER: Robert Rubinstein, Interim Executive Director, Urban Redevelopment Authority, City of Pittsburgh April Week 5 Community Development/ Civic Engagement. Role of Non-Profits/NGOs in Neighborhood Development. Civic Capacity as an Element in Urban Policy. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco & Low Income Investment Fund, Investing in What Works in America s Communities. (Handout). Von Hoffman, The Past, Present and Future of Community Development in the United States, pgs

4 The City Reader Selections: Putnam: Bowling Alone: America s Declining Social Capital, pgs Arnstein: A Ladder of Citizen Participation, pgs The Metropolitan Revolution. Houston and El Civics, pgs Selections from the Urban Sociology Reader (Handout). Wacquant and Wilson. The Cost of Racial and Class Exclusion in the Inner City, pgs GUEST SPEAKER: Presley Gillespie, President& CEO, Neighborhood Allies April 19, 2016 Week 6 Transportation. Federal policies. Implications of development patterns on workforce. Workforce development system. The City Reader Selections: W.E.B. DuBois, The Negro Problems of Philadelphia; The Question of Earning a Living; and Color Prejudice, pgs Owen: Green Manhattan: Everywhere Should Be More Like New York, pgs Stout: The Automobile, the City and the New Urban Mobilities: pgs The Metropolitan Revolution. Denver: The Four Votes, pgs Brookings Institution, Metropolitan Policy Program. (Handout) Where the Jobs Are: Employer Access to Labor by Transit The Sustainable Urban Development Reader (Handouts) Cervero: Transit and the Metropolis: Finding Harmony, pgs Pucher & Buehler: Cycling for Everyone: Lessons from Europe, pgs GUEST SPEAKER: Chris Sandvig, Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group WRITING ASSIGNMENT DUE

5 April 26, 2016 Week 7 Sustainable Development. Infrastructure. Water Quality and Energy Reading Assignments Selections from The City Reader Calthorpe: Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change, pgs Beatley: Planning for Sustainability in European Cities: A Review of Practices in Leading Cities, pgs Project for Public Spaces, Place Making and the Future of Cities, Pgs Steve Rugare and Terry Schwartz, eds. Cities Growing Smaller. (Handouts) Karina Pallagst. Shrinking Cities: Planning Challenges from an International Perspective, pgs 7-15 May 3, 2016 Week 8 CLASS PRESENTATIONS

6 BIBLIOGRAPHY Nancy O. Andrews and David Erickson, Editors. Investing in What Works in America s Communities. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the Low Income Investment Fund, Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley. The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy. The Brookings Institution Michael Larice and Elizabeth Macdonald, Editors. The Urban Design Reader, Second Edition. Routledge, Richard T. LeGates and Frederic Stout, Editors. The City Reader. Sixth Edition. Routledge, Jan Lin and Christopher Mele, Editors. The Urban Sociology Reader. Second Edition. Routledge, 2013 Steve Rugare and Terry Schwartz, Editors. Cities Growing Smaller. Kent State University, Xavier de Souza Briggs, Editor. The Geography of Opportunity: Race and Housing Choice in Metropolitan America. Brookings Institution Stephen M. Wheeler and Timothy Beatley, Editors. The Sustainable Urban Development Reader. Third Edition. Routledge, 2014.