Urbanisms Beyond the City, Fall 2019
We live in a world of division between the city and the territory beyond (between urban and rural population, between red and blue states, between liberal and conservative, between financial capitals and suburban developments, between capital cities and mid-size towns, etc.). This project asks if urbanism can lessen the divide by venturing into the country. Knowing Ebenezer Howard’s “Town-Country Magnet” and Ivan Leonidov’s Linear City, we searched for historical instances in which values of cosmopolitan urbanity were intentionally transferred beyond the city in order to affect the territory. From agricultural towns and temporary settlements to linear cities and co-operatives, the semester-long research shows that this divide is not a new phenomenon and that architectural urbanism has long been experimenting with techniques that export urban culture beyond the confines of the city. This catalog collects and interprets hundreds of built and visionary strategies, while the exhibit compares and theorizes twenty-seven examples that have at least been partially built in order to establish a reference guide for future deployments.
