USP 612 Community, Planning, and Ethics

Introduction to the history and theory of community development in North America, the theory and practice of urban planning in North America, and to the ethics of civic and business practices linking the public, private, and non-profit sectors. It examines the tensions among market-based development, community action, and public intervention. Topics range in scale from housing style choices to aggregate trends in metropolitan form and cover a wide range of actors including individual households, private builders and developers, reformers, nonprofit organizations, and governments. The course will focus on plans as the outcome of political processes with specific consequences for different constituencies within the city.