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London Neighborhoods: Architecture, Planning, People, and Urban Change

BRST 295 (CRN: 30603) | Syllabus

Instructors: Elihu Rubin
Dates:
Course Mode:
Meeting Times: MW 2.00-4.15
Distributional Requirements: Humanities
Eligibility: Open to pre-college and college students

In 1964, UCL sociologist Ruth Glass used the term “gentrification” to describe the dynamics of neighborhood change in London. The same tensions around investment, newcomers, “authentic” culture, affordability, displacement, and sense-of-place endure in our efforts to understand, appreciate, and equitably plan for place-based communities. London Neighborhoods is in part a field course with weekly visits to sites across London where we hone our skills of observation, learn how to break-down the perception of disorder and read the city as a latticework of patterns, and meet local “guides”—citizens, proprietors, professionals, activists, public officials—who introduce neighborhood strengths and challenges as we build up a vocabulary of urban concepts and consider the arts and politics of representing places, from the documentary film to the city planning document. 

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