25% of your grade for this course will be based on a class project, worked on and completed as a team, presented to the class, and submitted as a written report at the end of the semester. Your term project this semester will be a team effort to do a case study analysis of an urban space, on the model of the Rudy Bruner Award case studies. The instructors will form the teams, and each team will have one of the instructors "mentoring" the project.
 

       Formal work on this project will begin near mid-semester, but much of the reading and discussion earlier in the semester has been designed to help you develop an approach to and understanding of the methods for completing the case study.
 

       To accomplish this, and complete the project by the end of the semester, you will need to:
 

• form teams ( 3or 4 students per team).

 
• identify an appropriate place to study.

 
• find some initial descriptive information about the place.

 
• Develop a set of issues and questions about that place to be answered by the study.

 
• Gather information about the place by:
• Interviews
• Observations
• Collecting archival information (news clippings, etc., other research)

 
• Write and present in class a case study report.

 

• -what is the historical, physical and social context of the site?
• -how did this place come into existence?
• -what different "players" and entities were involved in its development and how did they work and interact (government, private or non-profit organizations, designers, etc.)?
• -what does its impact on the surounding area seem to be?

      The project will be modeled on the case studies that result from the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence (please check out the Bruner website at www.brunerfoundation.org). We will have many occasions to read and discuss this award, the urban projects it studies and the case studies it produces, in class. In short, this award program attempts to find, understand, learn from, and then celebrate efforts that create places which significantly improve urban life. The 2001 award cycle will be visiting sites during this semester, and the class will be following and discussing the award visits in real time.

      The choice of your site will be made in consultation with the faculty. The site could be a recent urban development (like Metrotech, Battery Park City, new parts of Times Square) or a previously studied Bruner site (like the Greenmarket, Brooklyn-Queens Greenway, Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center, etc.)
 

       During the award cycle, the Bruner task force visits five places and spends 15 to 20 hours on site, interviewing, observing and collecting archival records that can help gain insights into the diverse and multifaceted perspectives required to make significant impact in our cities. These perspectives include:
 

- the designer and aspects of the physical setting itself (architecture, landscape design, urban planning, etc.);

- the developer;

- community and citizen groups involved in the planning;

- economic and financial aspects of the plan;

- involvement with and of the local government agencies
 

      The task of the instructors will be to:

1) help you find a project to study similar to those considered as part of the Bruner award

- they need to be real physical places - not concepts or plans
 

2) help you gain entry to responsible people in the organizations you will be studying;

3) help you plan your assessment and report.
 

       The projects you use should be in the NYC metro area. They can be re-visits of past Bruner finalists or totally different projects.
 

       You should expect that over the course of the semester - and especially in the last half of the term, members of your team will be spending significant amounts of time at the chosen site.