Urbanism and Urbanity in the Western World

The City today is very different from the City in ancient times, yet both have much in common. Cities in each and every era were always the reflection of the people who made them, the political circumstances within which they operated and the result of the economic forces shaping them. Cities are the sum of the institutions which they host and thus reflect the local cultural of the every day and the eternal. The course has two main goals: 1. to acquaint the students with the history of urbanism and urbanity in the Western world, and 2. to train the students towards analysing and appreciating urban landscape and its straight-forward and hidden messages. We will study cities across the Western civilization, from the dawn of urbanism until today, studying the common and the unique political, social and cultural challenges which made them similar yet also so different from each other. Studying different cultures and places, we will examine the development of cities and their components along with the motives of their inhabitants. We will study important urban plans and texts, relying as much as possible on Israeli cities, as both a good case studies for Western urbanism as well as unique, local products.