Critic: Moji Baratloo
Teaching Assistants: Amy Finley, Patrick O'Connor and Dahlia Roberts
Using New York City as a model, the 2007 Urban Studies studio aims to investigate and challenge limitations of the contemporary instigators impacting the development of the new urban landscape. Twentieth century New York enjoyed a reputation as a prototype for urban life, in all of its cultural and industrial manifestations. However, in the current global environment New York's status is being challenged against new set of localized conditions. These include changes in land value, use and zoning, shifts in various levels of policy, stewardship, and ownership (public, private or public/private) to the reconfiguration and implementation of complex and interrelated natural and man-made systems. The studio's initial emphasis will encompass but not limited to the subjects of ecology and society, and their role in the critical configuration and manipulation of both physical form and abstract space. From the consideration of natural ecologies and economic trends to the regulation of density and urban form or the negotiation of the history and culture of a place, New York's Waterfront City in the making today allows the Urban Studies studio to explore and test the potential impact of our environmental choices on the urban and the larger region facing on-going new transformations.
