After successful completion of the course, students are able to comprehend the history, guiding principles and theory of the city and their influences on spatial/functional structures, on the significance and change of public spaces and in relation to spatial patterns of order.

The development of the city is in constant tension between social and ideological values and premises. Knowledge of the political, social and cultural context of the respective time is therefore indispensable if one wants to learn to read and understand the built reality of the city. The lecture series is intended to help students understand structures, different urban models and patterns of spatial order, as well as the utopias, guiding principles and value concepts behind them.

The following learning objectives are linked to this:

• Knowledge of the development of the European city and in particular the history of ideas of the city in the 19th and 20th centuries.

• Competence in spatial planning analysis, in particular in the evaluation of structural manifestations of urban planning models and ideologies;

• Practicing the skills of networked thinking and spatial planning/urban planning action.

The lecture series - from the

+ city models of the Greek and Roman antiquity

+ to the development of cities in the Middle Ages and modern times

+ to urbanist designs and the reform approaches of the 19th and 20th centuries,

+ the appearance and breakthrough of modernity,

+ the large housing estates and satellite towns of the post-war period up to the

+ city of postmodernism

provides a basis for critical thinking about urban concepts, urban models and urban utopias, and about continuities and breaks in the urban planning/spatial planning debate and development of the city and urban spaces.

Lectures on the topic

Written exam