Transforming the Urban Landscape
Reading List
Required: Read Now
- The following publications provide an essential background for
the studio. If you have not already read them, please do so now.
Anne Whiston Spirn, The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and
Human Design. New York: Basic Books, 1984.
_______________, "The Poetics of City and Nature: Toward a
New Aesthetic For Urban Design." Landscape Journal (Fall
1988).
Required: Read Now or When Assigned
- These publications of the West Philadelphia Landscape Plan
contain more detailed information than the on-line versions.
Read all of them by the end of September. There are copies on
reserve in the Fisher Fine Arts Library and in studio.
The West Philadelphia Landscape Plan: A Framework for
Action. Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of
Pennsylvania, l991.
"This Garden is a Town". Graduate School of Fine Arts,
University of Pennsylvania, l990.
Models of Success: Landscape Improvement and Community
Development. Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of
Pennsylvania, l991.
Shaping the Block. Graduate School of Fine Arts, University
of Pennsylvania, l991.
Vacant Land: A Resource for Reshaping Urban Neighborhoods.
Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania,
l991.
The West Philadelphia Digital Database: An Atlas and Guide.
Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania,
l996.
- The following required texts may be purchased at the Pennsylvania
Book Center on Walnut and 38th Streets:
Herbert Gans, People, Plans, and Policies. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993. New edition of his earlier
work with reflections two decades later. A critique of the
planning and design philosophies and methods which informed
urban redevelopment in the 1960s and led to such projects as
Mill Creek Housing (once hailed as a landmark of urban
design, now an urban disaster).
Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of
the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. A
history of the policies and practices, public and private,
which led to the growth of American suburbs and decline of
American cities over the past 150 years. This provides
essential background for understanding how Mill Creek and
other inner-city neighborhoods came to be as they are today.
Donald Schon, The Reflective Practitioner. New York: Basic
Books, 1984. A study of professional practice as artistry
involving "reflection-in-action." The book includes
descriptions of architectural studio education. See also
his later book, Educating the Reflective Practitioner, which
uses design education as a model for professional education
in general.
Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information. Cheshire, CT: Graphics
Press, 1990.
Recommended: May Be Assigned Later
Elijah Anderson, Streetwise (Chicago, 1990).
Penny Bach, Public Art in Philadelphia (Temple, 1992).
Grady Clay, Close-Up: How to Read the American City (Chicago, 1980).
Elizabeth Cobb, The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood (Spring Publications, 1993).
Thomas Dunne and Luna Leopold, Water in Environmental Planning
(Freeman, 1978).
Dolores Hayden, Redesigning the American Dream (Norton, 1984).
Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place (MIT Press, 1995).
Joel Garreau, Edge Cities (Doubleday, 1991).
Allan Jacobs, Looking at Cities (Harvard, 1985).
John Jakle and David Wilson, Derelict Landscape (Rowman and Littlefield, 1992).
Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America's
Schools, (HarperCollins, 1992).
Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series (Rappahannock Press, 1993).
Kevin Lynch, Image of the City (MIT, 1960).
Kevin Lynch, "Environmental Adaptability," in City Sense and City Design (MIT Press, 1990), pp. 379-395.
Kevin Lynch, Wasting Away (Sierra Club, 1990).
Douglas Massey, American Apartheid (Harvard, 1993).
Barbara Matilsky, Fragile Ecologies. (Rizzoli, 1992)
Carl Nightingale, On the Edge (Basic Books, 1993).
Dan Rose, Black American Street Life (U. of Pennsylvania, 1987).
Mike Rose, Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America (Houghton-Mifflin, 1995).
Mark Springer, Watershed: A Successful Voyage Into Integrative Learning (National Middle School Association, 1994).
Anne Whiston Spirn, "Deep Structure: On Process, Form, and Design in
the Urban Landscape," in City and Nature (Odense, DK: Odense
University Press, 1993).
Anne Whiston Spirn, "From Uluru to Cooper's Place: Patterns in the
Cultural Landscape," Orion (Spring 1990).
Anne Whiston Spirn, "Constructing Nature: The Legacy of Frederick Law
Olmsted," in Uncommon Ground, edited by William Cronon (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1995).
Colin Ward, The Child in the City (Pantheon).
Sam Bass Warner, Streetcar Suburbs (Harvard, 1962).
Sam Bass Warner, To Dwell Is to Garden (Northeastern, 1987).
Sam Bass Warner, The Private City (Pennsylvania, 1987).
Back to Course Gateway Page
Last Update: 8 January 1997
