Spring Quarter, 2016
C. The Past and Future of American Cities
Henry Binford, Associate Professor, History
Thursday mornings, 9:30 – 11:30 a.m., Norris University Center
The United States, having moved far from Jefferson’s dream of an agrarian republic, is now an overwhelmingly urban nation. Only a minuscule percentage of our population still works the land. In this we are part of a planetary trend: more than half of the world’s population now live in cities, and the urban proportion is growing rapidly. But what does it mean for a nation, an economy, a culture, a place, or a person to be “urban” rather than “rural”? How has the worldwide experience of urbanization been inflected by the peculiarities of our national history and culture? How do we use that history to think about the forces and the decisions that are shaping our near-term future? This course will address these questions through an exploration of the U.S. experience in a western world context.