Courses:

Course Info

• Course Number / Code:
• 11.947 (Fall 1998) 
• Course Title:
• Imaging the City: The Place of Media in City Design and Development 
• Course Level:
• Graduate 
• Offered by :
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
  Massachusetts, United States  
• Department:
• Urban Studies and Planning 
• Course Instructor(s):
• Prof. Lawrence Vale
  Prof. Sam Warner 
• Course Introduction:
•  
• 
  
  11.947 Imaging the City: The Place of Media in City Design and Development
  
  
  
  

  Fall 1998

  
  
  

  
  
  

  Course Highlights

  
  
  

  This course features a complete set of lectures, as well as readings and assignments.

  
  
  

  Course Description

  
  
  

  Kevin Lynch's landmark volume, The Image of the City (1960), emphasized the perceptual characteristics of the urban environment, stressing the ways that individuals mentally organize their own sensory experience of cities. Increasingly, however, city imaging is supplemented and constructed by exposure to visual media, rather than by direct sense experience of urban realms. City images are not static, but subject to constant revision and manipulation by a variety of media-savvy individuals and institutions. In recent years, urban designers (and others) have used the idea of city image proactively -- seeking innovative ways to alter perceptions of urban, suburban, and regional areas. City imaging, in this sense, is the process of constructing visually-based narratives about the potential of places.