Start Date
05/08/2015
End Date
05/09/2015
Description
Resilience and adaptability are key elements of viable urbanism. But how have these concepts been understood historically? And how do they shape the design and stewardship of urban landscapes today? The dynamic relationships between cities and their rivers, a landscape of potentially critical adaptability and resilience, is the focus of the 2015 Garden and Landscape Studies Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks. Building on the emergence of urban humanities and urban landscape history, we propose to consider the urban river as a city-making landscape deserving of careful reading and analysis: past, present, and future.
Location
Washington, DC
Distance Learning
No
Course Equivalency
No
Subjects
Agriculture / Local Food Production
Horticulture / Plants
Housing & Community Design
Parks & Recreation
Transportation
Urban Planning & Design
Water / Stormwater Management
Health, Safety and Welfare
No
Hours
12.0
Learning Outcomes
1) Learn about how the concepts of resilience and adaptability, key elements of viable urbanism, been understood historically.
2) Understand how rivers frame the urban experience.
3) While describing the river as part of urban infrastructure, discover how we can read the river landscape as a dynamic catalyst in the urban process.
4) Learn about what the role of the river is, beyond its performance as a transportation corridor and a water source.
5) Learn about how a river's place, its flow, its speed, and its dynamic character shape the development of cities and the experience of the urban landscape spatially, geographically, and temporally.
6) Understand what landscape elements are distinctive to these urban river contexts—bridges, parks, ports, weirs, mills, various defensive structures—and how the landscapes of inland river cities might differ from those in deltas and on estuaries.
7) Learn about what we can discover by investigating the historical role of the river and city-making. It might offer an alternative perspective on the contemporary issues of access to clean water, public space, transportation, and the challenges of climate change.
Instructors
Roland Fletcher, Brian Davis, Vittoria Di Palma, Alexander Robinson, Ray Gastil, Edith Katz, David Malda, Michael Miller, Elizabeth Mossop, Carol Reese, Pieter Schengenga, Jyoti Sharma, Rabun Taylor, Kimberly Thornton, Lei Zhang
Course Codes
Provider
Dumbarton Oaks