URD1515H F
Instructor: Daniel Rotsztain
Meeting Section: LEC0101
Tuesday 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM

This course examines the kind of urbanisms that exist at the periphery of city regions. Often called the “suburbs”, the term fails to describe the multiplicity of urban forms, economic configurations, and cultural expressions that characterize contemporary peri-urban areas. By complicating narratives of the “white picket” suburbs inherited by normative urbanism and the media, the seminar invites students to participate in a nuanced investigation of these regions grounded on their own experiences. Considering the peripheral city in-and-of-itself will inform a responsive planning and urban design practice that supports and enhances suburban livelihoods that don’t fit the mold of Jane Jacobs’ “ballet of the streets”. As wealth continues to concentrate within service-rich inner-city districts and exclusive suburban communities, there is a professional imperative to understand “the suburbs” so that urban planners, designers, and architects can be equipped with the appropriate tools to support them.

Through readings, presentations, interactive engagements, and generative discussion that positions all students and the instructor as experts, the course will invite students to deconstruct the terminology of the “suburbs”, contributing to an emerging discourse that treats these essential parts of city-regions as topics of study in and of themselves. With a focus on the Greater Toronto Area, we will discuss the emergence of the hyper-diversity in the suburbs, spatial justice, and the strategies diasporic communities have employed to adapt peripheral regions’ commercial and industrial architecture into essential social infrastructure.

The course will incorporate an investigation of strip malls, a much-maligned form of commercial architecture that nevertheless play central roles in the social lives of suburban communities. Through the case study of plazaPOPS, a community-lead approach to transforming strip mall parking lots into gathering spaces, students will be introduced to alternative tools and techniques in community-based facilitation, co-creation and design engagement. The studio aspect of the course will involve series of cumulative assignments focused on creating a revamped approach to community engagement and collaborative design that will be employed during plazaPOPS’ fourth season in 2024.