705-217/317 History of Urban Planning

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Subject Description:

The course assumes urban environment stems from an historical process reflecting culture, economic, political and social frameworks and interrelationships. A cultural and historical study of cities and urban planning and design from early city cultures of the Middle East to 19th century urbanisation and sub-urbanisation. The subject examines some great periods in urban history - First City cultures, Classical Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Neo-Classicism - in terms of the cultural and natural forces which shaped the structure and form of their great and not so great cities. Critical analyses of representative examples of urban form and style are included. The historical determinants of the spatial structure of cities and the physical design and form of urban elements: buildings, gardens, squares and monuments. Urban design principles and practice fundamental to (western) cultural tradition. The effects of changing (western European) attitudes on the design of urban form in history.

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