Designing Cities course in Coursera

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ChandraNH
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Designing Cities course in Coursera

Post by ChandraNH »

Thought this group would be interested in this free course from the University of Penn school of PennDesign on Designing Cities. https://www.coursera.org/#course/designingcities

Coursera is a MOOC (massive open online course) system that offers up more than 400 free courses from over 80 institutions around the world.

This particular course starts 10/7 and goes for 10 weeks.

Here are some of the details (all others can be found in the link above) and it looks pretty interesting, but I'm trying to keep myself from registering for it as I'm already enrolled in a Big Data course through Johns Hopkins and a Sci Fi course through the University of Michigan, both which start around the time of this course).

About the Course


Designing Cities is a ten-week course starting in October 2013. Every week will focus on a different aspect of Designing Cities including: How Today’s City Evolved; The Ideas That Shape Cities; Tools for Designing Cities; Making Cities Sustainable; Cities in the Information Age; Preserving Older Cities; Designing New Cities, Districts and Neighborhoods; The Challenges of Informal Cities and Disadvantaged Neighborhoods; and Visionary Cities. Materials will be presented by the instructors and guest faculty from PennDesign through a series of five or more modules per week, each typically 10-12 minutes long.

The first module each week will be a roundtable discussion among professors Stefan Al, Jonathan Barnett, and Gary Hack introducing the big issues associated with the subject. Each succeeding module will be a self-contained illustrated presentation of a set of ideas and images. There will be a list of suggested readings for those who wish to follow up on the ideas in each module.

Everyone enrolled in Designing Cities will be expected to complete 3 assignments. These will be posted on the course site and they will be in the form of peer assessments. There will also be three sessions where we discuss a selection of the assignments that have been submitted. There will be a great deal to be learned from the ideas participants submit, reflecting cities of all sizes and circumstances across the globe.
The course concludes with a discussion by the faculty of the issues raised in the discussion groups and responses to the assignments. We are looking forward to connecting with you and seeing the issues at the forefront in designing your city.
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