On Tue, 7 Jun 1994, Marshall Feldman wrote:
> I'm starting to think about the fall :^( and redesigning my course on
> urban and regional theory. It's an introductory course for graduate
> students in community planning who have no economics or social science
> prerequisites. The course is called "Spatial and Fiscal Relationships
> of Communities" and I generally teach it as a course in urban theory,
> covering such "classic" things as Christaller's central place theory,
> the Chicago School's concentric zone theory, etc. and more recent and
> radical stuff like flex-spec, and the like. Generally, I've used
> Dicken and Lloyd's _Location in Space_ combined with Mike Davis' _City
> of Quartz_ the past few years. I'm a bit dissatisfied with the course
> covering too much and covering things in too little depth. Does anyone
> out there teach a similar course and/or have suggestions?
One strategy might be to pick one or two urban areas or urban problems
(or 1 or 2 problems in 1 urban area) and then alternate between
theoretical and empirical approaches--perhaps even breaking the class
into teams who are supposed to produce parts of a larger report. I've
used this strategy successfully in teaching computer courses (and with
mixed success in teaching about the welfare state). I found that by
building the course around a task that's very tangible and very
bounded, I could interweave different theoretical approaches, issues,
etc. without leaving the students feeling too overwhelmed. However, it
does require a lot of thinking/daydreaming about the structure of the
course well in advance.
Anders Schneiderman
UCB Sociology / Center for Community Economic Research
