The Unruly City

The history of the American city is the history of conquering the "unruly": real estate parcels, neighborhoods, buildings, and even people that represent decay, obstacles to capital, unlawfulness or disorder. Designers denigrated unruliness in the pursuit of modernization in the 20th century, but today seem more conflicted on the constitution and remedies for disorder. Is disorder in the eye of the beholder? What disrupts urban life more, the broken windows of vacant houses or the arrival of an upscale grocery in a poor neighborhood? Neighborhoods that have lost most of their population and buildings, or new football stadiums offered as economic and architectural solutions to blight? Programs of housing, urban planning, infrastructural urbanism, zoning, policing, historic preservation and mass transportation have impacts that can either squelch or protect the "unruly." No design is not political. This course examines the divergent definitions of order and disorder that are shaping contemporary approaches to urban planning, governance and cultural production. This seminar digs into these questions, using the classic debate between Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs over the future of New York City as an entry point into urban political and economic ideas that engage concepts of order and disorder. We will cover readings by Sennett, Agamben, Mouffe, Negri & Hardt, Baldwin, Fanon, Certeau, Harvey, Zukin and others. This course will be place-based at Sumner High School in The Ville neighborhood of St. Louis, a historically Black neighborhood. The class will arrange a carpool to the teaching location and engage the community with real-world examination of course themes throughout the semester.
Course Attributes: AS HUM; AS SC; EN H

The Unruly City

AMERICAN CULTURE STUDIES 429G

Section 01