NYC: The Greatest Suburb on Earth?

7231 – PLDS 2016 – A, Spring 2009

School of Art and Design History and Theory, Parsons The New School for Design

Tuesdays, 12:00 - 2:40 PM

Course Description

Have the proliferation of luxury lifestyle enclaves, large chain stores, and personal mobile devices transformed the landscape of New York City into that of a planned community? Has the consumption-driven development of the City reduced its physical, economic, and cultural flows into that of a suburban mall?  This course will examine New York City's evolving urban form beginning after the post World War II exodus of the white middle class to the suburbs to the current re-emergence of the City as a lifestyle center for a global elite.  By exploring how the urban, sub-urban and ex-urban interact and overlap in New York, we will trace the socioeconomic and physical flows occurring on multiple scales of movement, technology, and design.  The class will work in interdisciplinary teams to investigate mechanisms for reading, mapping and planning New York, while examining issues of mallification, gentrification, gatedness, and densification.

Readings! Go to http://www.colincantread.com/NYC.html

POTENTIAL SITES

Manhattan

Union Square

Hudson Yards - Hell’s Kitchen/Port Authority

Columbus Circle

5th Avenue and 59th Street

Grand Central Station

SoHo

Sub/Ex/Peri

Port Newark

Home Depot

Big Box Stores (6th Avenue & 20s, Queens, Time Warner Center)

IKEA (Red Hook and Elizabeth)

Whole Foods / Trader Joes

Radburn/ Llewellyn Park

Levittown

Westchester County

Roosevelt Island

Coney Island

Staten Island

Atlantic Yards Brooklyn

The Shops at Atlas Park - Queens

Mappings, Derives, Trajectories

Fresh Direct

Starbucks Sit-In

Trash Stalking

Mapping Examples

Course Syllabus 

Web Resources

Case Studies

Bibliography

NYC-SuburbCard-final.pdf 

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