PLAN 3030

They changed this class's course number from PLAN 2030 to PLAN 3030 starting this semester.

Prof. Lawrence's urban planning class is a vast improvement over Prof. Beatley's lectures. Her class offers many frameworks to understand planning as a field and equips students with theories to understand real-world development and planning processes. One of the first ideas is to analogize/use metaphors to understand the city. The two main metaphors we kept returning to are the growth machine and the city as an ecosystem/jungle. The powerful idea of the Growth Machine by Harvey Molotch is powerful in understanding the faults of capitalism, as the norm is always to grow rather than assess healthy, sustainable growth. The city as an ecosystem links to the cradle-to-cradle ideology of seeing the inputs and outputs of a city, and metaphor highlights the amount of unrecyclable byproducts in the current day environment in the form of trash and pollution. This are just a taste of the class.

The ideas and theories are the whole of the class. Prof. Lawrence suggests that theories are interesting because they explain phenomena with a framework. However, one has to really engage with the class; otherwise, they can really glide by the class without much thought because the assignments as graded really leniently. There are three assignments (one one-person five-page essay and two five-page group essays) and weekly responses to either submit your notes on the weekly readings, videos, and podcasts. Honestly, if one engages with the weekly readings and media, they can probably gain more from them than the plain lectures, but Prof. Lawrence consolidates ideas well. I have to say, I regret not participating in class more by responding to her questions. She is friendly, so don't ever be afraid to speak up. Do not let the same five people speak every class!