readings for 07.18

Berman, Marshall. 'Baudelaire: Modernism in the Streets.'
Harvey, David. 'Modernity and Modernism.'

These are available on the MTL Reader as well as being made available in class last Wednesday.
As always, please come with thoughtful questions and a reading response printed.

THEORIZING THE URBAN :: MTL07 SUM2

We will be meeting on Wednesdays, 10-12.30 for those of you in Urban Theory.
For this coming meeting, please read the Lois Wirth article 'Urbanism as a Way of Life' and the Goerge Simmel article "The Metropolis and Mental Life."
For all meetings, please have typed and printed out a 200-400 word response/question which engages the weeks readings. We will discuss the readings in class.

Writing Issues

We would like to meet briefly with everyone from the Urban Theory class after Pat's workshop today (approx. 16:00h). It seems there are significant problems with your ability to write that indicate that you don't necessarily have the fundamental skills expected of a student enrolled in a writing intensive course. The issues we'd like to discuss are:
1) You follow the given instructions for a writing assignment.
2) You write in the third person for all academic and professional presentations.
3) Our assessment of your intellectual and professional development comes from your making factual and direct observations about the subject, bundling those observations into collections of facts with larger meaning and inference, using those facts as bundled in support of an intellectual position, and using conventions of writing together to form a stylistically sophisticated form of argument.
These are the standard way that people communicate intellectual and professional ideas between each other. They are not radical. They are not advanced. You should be able to complete these three by the time you enter a university.

Place Ville Marie

The fact that Place Ville Marie is called a "Place" is not necessarily enough validation that it is the sort of Place that we discussed on our rainy walk. We do not see how this location is a place and few of you have enough factual observations to back up your assertion that this is a place in the way that we discussed and labored over in class.

We are accepting your comparisons but we agree between us that this is not a place that we'd call a place.

Photo Essay Assignment #2

Find a Figure / Ground plan of a precinct or a city. Something like this image:

Within that precinct or whole city scale image select an urban element like one of these:
Make it into your own drawing of the urban space the way the urban figures and voids are shown above. Use White, Black, and 50% gray shapes to delineate three interrelated but different conditions in the map image like the piazzas and cathedrals and streets are doing above. Publish your image to your course web blog.

With the qualities of the space you've drawn in the above Figure / Ground drawing in mind; head out into the city to find and photograph images from inside your Figure /Ground that exist in Montréal. (In Other Words: Go photograph views in Montréal that are experienced through the same qualities you read from your Figure / Ground plan.) Post one image from around Montréal that seems to be in your Figure /Ground plan in the same post below the Figure / Ground.

(Topic for writing: Where in the plan is this view located?)

Explain in a short text (200-500 words) where in the space of the Figure /Ground plan the view photographed is located. Make no mark or trace of the photoview on the plan. Just describe it in words that evoke a particular spatial layout. Post this text below your photo and Figure / Ground plan. Edit it once before finalizing your submission.

Photo Essay Assignment #1

Take photos of Civic Squares & Places in the old city (Vieux Montréal). Compare and contrast one image of each of two places you've photographed for their urban components and spatial qualities evident in the photos.