This is an archived course. A more recent version may be available at ocw.mit.edu.

 

Readings

SES # TOPICS READINGS
Part 1 - Processes, Practices, Theories, and Traditions
1 Boston: Transforming and Constructing Nature Required

Buy at Amazon Williams, Raymond. "Ideas of Nature." In Problems in Materialism and Culture. New York, NY: Verso, 1980, pp. 67-85. ISBN: 0860917290.

Buy at Amazon Spirn. "Reclaiming Common Ground: Water, Neighborhoods, and Public Spaces." In The American Planning Tradition. Edited by Robert Fishman. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Press, and Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. ISBN: 094387596X.

Further Reading

Buy at Amazon Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1973. ISBN: 0195197364.

Thomas, W. L., ed. Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. Chicago, IL: Published for the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the National Science Foundation by the University of Chicago Press, 1956.

Buy at Amazon Melosi, Martin. The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. ISBN: 0801861527.

Tarr, Joel. Infrastructure and Urban Growth in the Nineteenth Century. Essays in Public Works History No. 14. Kansas City, MO: Public Works Historical Society, 1985.

Buy at Amazon Whitehill, Walter Muir. Boston: A Topographical History. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1968. ISBN: 0674079515.

Buy at Amazon Kennedy, Lawrence. Planning the City Upon a Hill: Boston Since 1630. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts, 1992. ISBN: 0870237802.

Buy at Amazon Krieger, Alex, et al. Mapping Boston. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. ISBN: 0262112442.

Baxter, Sylvester. "Report of the Secretary." and Charles Eliot, "Report of the Landscape Architect." In Report of the Board of Metropolitan Park Commissioners . Boston, MA: Wright and Potter Print. Co., 1893.

Buy at Amazon Zaitzevsky, Cynthia. Frederick Law Olmsted and the Boston Park System. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1983. ISBN: 0674318315.

Emmet, Alan. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Changing of a Landscape. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1978.

Skehan, James. Puddingstone, Drumlins, and Ancient Volcanoes: A Geological Field Guide to Boston. Dedham, MA: WesStone Press, 1979.

Buy at Amazon Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1991. ISBN: 0393308731.

Buy at Amazon Hurley, Andrew, ed. Common Fields: An Environmental History of St. Louis. St. Louis, MO: Missouri Historical Society, 1997. ISBN: 1883982162.

Buy at Amazon Davis, Mike. Ecology of Fear. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, 1998. ISBN: 0805051066.

Buy at Amazon Cosgrove, Dennis. Palladian Landscape. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1993. ISBN: 027100942X.

Buy at Amazon Nishimura, Kimiko. Tokyo: A Spatial Anthropology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995. ISBN: 0520071352.
2 Urban Nature and City Design: Practice, Theory, and Tradition I Required

Buy at Amazon Spirn. The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1984. ISBN: 0465026990.

Further Reading

Buy at Amazon Creese, Walter. Search for Environment. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966. ISBN: 0801843634.

Buy at Amazon Spirn. "Urban Nature and Human Design: Renewing the Great Tradition." In Classic Readings in Urban Planning. Edited by Jay Stein. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1995. ISBN: 0070611386.

Buy at Amazon Marsh, George Perkins. Man and Nature. New York, NY: C. Scribner, 1864. ISBN: 0295983167.

Buy at Amazon Sutton, S. B., ed. Civilizing American Cities: A Selection of Frederick Law Olmsted's Writings on City Landscapes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971. ISBN: 0262650126.

Buy at Amazon Spirn. "Constructing Nature: The Legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted." In Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. Edited by William Cronon. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1995. ISBN: 0393038726.

Geddes, Patrick. Cities in Evolution. London, UK: Williams and Norgate, 1915.

Buy at Amazon Mumford, Lewis. Urban Prospect. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968. ISBN: 0844661147.

Buy at Amazon McHarg, Ian. Design with Nature. Garden City, NY: Natural History Press, 1969. ISBN: 0385055099.

Wallace McHarg Rpberts and Todd, Comprehensive Plan for Sanibel, Florida (1974).

Juneja, Narendra, and Spirn. Environmental Resources of the Toronto Central Waterfront. Philadelphia, PA: Wallace McHarg Roberts and Todd, 1976.

Buy at Amazon Lynch, Kevin. Good City Form. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981. ISBN: 0262620464.

Buy at Amazon Spirn. "The Authority of Nature." In Nature and Ideology. Edited by Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1997. ISBN: 0884022463.

Buy at Amazon Hough, Michael. Cities and Natural Process. New York, NY: Routledge, 1995. ISBN: 0415121981.
3 Urban Nature and City Design: Practice, Theory, and Tradition II Required

Buy at Amazon Hise, Greg, and William Deverell, eds. Eden By Design: The 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan for the Los Angeles Region. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000. ISBN: 0520224159.
See Original Illustrations.

Further Reading

Buy at Amazon Schön, Donald. The Reflective Practitioner. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1983. ISBN: 046506874X.

Buy at Amazon Lynch, Kevin. "Urban Design," and "City Design: What It Is and How It Might Be Taught." In City Sense and City Design. Edited by Banerjee and Southworth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990. ISBN: 0262121433.

Buy at Amazon Fogelson, Robert. The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850-1930. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967. ISBN: 0520082303.

Buy at Amazon Davis, Mike. Ecology of Fear. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, 1998. ISBN: 0805051066.

Buy at Amazon Hayden, Dolores. The Power of Place: Urban Landscape as Public History. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995. ISBN: 0262581523

Copeland, Robert Morris. The Most Beautiful City in America: Essay and Plan for the Improvement of the City of Boston. Boston, MA: Lee and Shepard, 1872.

Buy at Amazon Fein, Albert. Landscape into Cityscape: Frederick Law Olmsted's Plans for a Greater New York City. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968. ISBN: 0442225393.

Baxter, Sylvester. "Report of the Secretary." and Charles Eliot, "Report of the Landscape Architect." In Report of the Board of Metropolitan Park Commissioners . Boston, MA: Wright and Potter Print. Co., 1893.

Nolen, John. City Planning. New York, NY: D. Appleton and Co., 1916.

Hubbard, Theodora Kimball, and Henry Vincent Hubbard. Our Cities To-Day and To-Morrow. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929.

Buy at Amazon McHarg, Ian. Design with Nature. Garden City, NY: Natural History Press, 1969. ISBN: 0385055099.
4 West Philadelphia's Mill Creek: Rebuilding Urban Communities and Restoring Natural Environments Required

Spirn. The West Philadelphia Landscape Plan: A Framework for Action. University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Fine Arts, 1991.
West Philadelphia Landscape Project.

Further Reading

Buy at Amazon Spirn. Language of Landscape. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. ISBN: 0300082940.

McHarg, Ian. "An Ecological Method for Landscape Architecture." Landscape Architecture 57 (January 1967): 105-7.

Buy at Amazon Lynch, Kevin. "Environmental Adaptability (1958)." In City Sense and City Design. Edited by Banerjee and Southworth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990. ISBN: 0262121433.

Buy at Amazon ———. Good City Form. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981. ISBN: 0262620464.

Buy at Amazon Jakle, John, and David Wilson. Derelict Landscapes: The Wasting of America's Built Environment. Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992. ISBN: 0847677362.

Buy at Amazon Bryant, Bunyan, ed. Environmental Justice. Washington, DC: Island, 1995. ISBN: 1559634170.

Buy at Amazon Warner, Sam Bass. To Dwell Is to Garden. Boston, MA: Northeastern, 1987. ISBN: 1555530079.

Buy at Amazon Cobb, Edith. Ecology of Imagination in Childhood. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1977. ISBN: 0231038704.
Tree People of Los Angeles.
5 Earth and Water Required

Select one of the two sets of readings below.

Earth

Robinson, G. D., and A. M. Spieker. "Nature to be Commanded: Earth Science Maps Applied to Land and Water Management." Geological Survey Professional Paper 950. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1978.

Buy at Amazon McPhee, John. "Los Angeles against the Mountains," In The Control of Nature. New York, NY: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1989. ISBN: 0374128901.

Or

Buy at Amazon Dunne, Thomas, and Luna Leopold. Water in Environmental Planning. San Francisco, CA: W.H. Freeman and Co., 1978. ISBN: 0716700794.
Tree People, Trans-Agency Resources for Environmental and Economic Sustainability, Los Angeles.

Further Reading

Buy at Amazon Leveson, David. Geology and the Urban Environment. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1980. ISBN: 0195025784.

Buy at Amazon Leggett, R. F. Cities and Geology. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1973. ISBN: 0070370621.

Buy at Amazon Craul, Philip. Urban Soils. New York, NY: Wiley, 1999. ISBN: 0471189030.

Buy at Amazon Davis, Mike. Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, 1998. ISBN: 0805051066.

Buy at Amazon Weiskel, Peter, et al. Water Resources and the Urban Environment, Lower Charles River Watershed, Massachusetts, 1630-2005. Reston, VA: USGS, 2005. ISBN: 0607968745. (USGS Circular 1280.)

Buy at Amazon Hedeen, Stanley. The Mill Creek: An Unnatural History of an Urban Stream. Accord, NY: Blue Heron Press, 1994. ISBN: 0964343606.

Buy at Amazon Marchione, William. The Charles: A River Transformed. Dover, NH: Arcadia, 1998. ISBN: 0752408275.

Buy at Amazon Crouch, Dora. Water Management in Ancient Greek Cities. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN: 0195072804.

Blake, Nelson. Water for the Cities: A History of the Urban Water Supply Problem in the US. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1956.

Juneja, Narendra, and Spirn. Environmental Resources of the Toronto Central Waterfront. Philadelphia, PA: Wallace, McHarg, Roberts, and Todd, 1976.

Spirn. Woodlands New Community: Guidelines for Site Planning. Philadelphia, PA: Wallace, McHarg, Roberts, and Todd, 1973.
6 Air and the Urban Biome Required

Select one of the two sets of readings below.

Arnfield, A. John. "Two Decades of Urban Climate Research." International Journal of Climatology 23 (2003): 1-26.

Buy at Amazon Spirn. "Better Air Quality at Street Level: Strategies for Urban Design." Time-Saver Standards for Urban Design. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2003. ISBN: 007068507X.
Battle McCarthy.

Or

Buy at Amazon Olmsted, Frederick Law, and J. B. Harrison. "Observations on the Treatment of Public Plantations, More Especially Related to the Uses of the Axe." In Forty Years of Landscape Architecture: Central Park. Edited by F. L. Olmsted, Jr. and Theodora Kimball. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1973. ISBN: 0262150093.

Buy at Amazon Page, Max. "Uses of the Axe." In The Creative Destruction of Manhattan. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999, pp. 177-215. ISBN: 0226644685.

Buy at Amazon Hough, Michael. "Plants." In Cities and Natural Processes. New York, NY: Routledge, 1995. ISBN: 0415298555.
Casey Trees.

Further Reading

Buy at Amazon Landsberg, Helmut. The Urban Climate. New York, NY: Academic Press, 1981. ISBN: 0124359604.

Buy at Amazon Givoni, B. Man, Climate, and Architecture. London, UK: Applied Science, 1976. ISBN: 085334678X.

Buy at Amazon Spirn. "Better Air Quality at Street-Level: Strategies for Urban Design." In Time-Saver Standards for Urban Design. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2003. ISBN: 007068507X.

Buy at Amazon Trefil, James. A Scientist in the City. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1994. ISBN: 0385247974.

Buy at Amazon Anderson, Edgar. Landscape Papers. Berkeley, CA: Turtle Island Foundation, 1976. ISBN: 0913666114.

Boston Redevelopment Authority. Boston Urban Wilds. Boston, MA: The Boston Redevelopment Authority, 1976.

Buy at Amazon Davis, Mike. Ecology of Fear. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, 1998. ISBN: 0805051066.

Buy at Amazon Platt, R. H., R. A. Rowntree, and P. C. Muick. The Ecological City: Preserving and Restoring Urban Biodiversity. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994. ISBN: 0870238841.

Buy at Amazon Lynch, Kevin. Wasting Away. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books, 1990. ISBN: 0871566753.

Buy at Amazon Nicholson-Lord, David. The Greening of the Cities. New York, NY: Routledge, 1987. ISBN: 0710203284.

Buy at Amazon Lyle, John. Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development. New York, NY: John Wiley, 1994. ISBN: 0471555827.

Buy at Amazon Hough, Michael. Cities and Natural Process. New York, NY: Routledge, 1995. ISBN: 0415121981.

Buy at Amazon Todd, Nancy Jack, and John Todd. From Eco-Cities to Living Machines. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic, 1994. ISBN: 1556431503.

Buy at Amazon Roseland, Mark, ed. Eco-City Dimensions. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society, 1997. ISBN: 0865713537.
Tree People of Los Angeles.
7 Dilemmas and Decisions: New Orleans Required

Select one book.

Buy at Amazon Colten, Craig E. An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2005. ISBN: 0807129771.

Buy at Amazon Lewis, Peirce. New Orleans: The Making of an Urban Landscape. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1976. ISBN: 0884104338.

Buy at Amazon Kelman, Ari. A River and Its City the Nature of Landscape in New Orleans. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003. ISBN: 0520234324.

Buy at Amazon Mathur, Anuradha. Mississippi Floods: Designing a Shifting Landscape. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. ISBN: 0300084307.
Part 2 - Presentation and Discussion of Student Papers
8-12 Presentation and Discussion Required and recommended readings will be selected in consultations between student authors and the instructor, and placed on reserve prior to each week's presentations.