History

Crime and Urban Planning in the United States

The spatial patterns and environmental characteristics of urban crime offer planners an opportunity to contribute to building crime-resilient communities.

The Theory and Practice of Culture and Placemaking

Learn about the complex issues at play in the interaction between culture and place: the urbanization process, the historical significance of tools used by urban planners, the urban revolution, early American urban theories, and the power of social movements.

Introduction to Culture and Placemaking

Explore the urban theories that have prepared urbanists and planners alike to recognize culture and embrace of diversity as significant mechanisms for shaping the city and the fate of urban landscapes. 

Women and Cities 3: Gender Equity in Private Life

This course explores interiors as they relate to gender equity using several case studies as examples.

Women and Cities: Gender Equity, Past and Present

This course investigates the meaning of “feminist city planning” by exploring how women have impacted cities past and present and imagining what a women-led city would look like from a variety of perspectives—both bottom-up and top-down.

A Brief History of Immigration and Planning

This course discusses the relationship among immigration, space, and planning, providing an overview of key figures, dates, and events related to immigration policies and practices in this country.

Race, Space, and Planning

This course discusses the relationship among race, space and planning, providing an overview of key dates and events relating to systemic racism in the United States.

Planning for Racial Equity

This course will introduce the concept of racial equity analyses in land use planning, describe the motives and rationales behind such analyses, provide for guidance for conducting such analyses and review, and critique an example racial equity analysis.

Housing and Racial Justice: Current Events Urban Resilience

This course, "Housing and Racial Justice: Current Events Urban Resilience," presents a TICCO Virtual Conference Event, hosted with support from Island Press in September 2020.

U.S. City Planning 101

This course is for viewers without a background or education in city planning who would like to know more about the profession, such as community members, stakeholders in planning processes, staff in planning offices, and other planning-adjacent individuals.

Introduction to Historic Preservation

This course will introduce planners to the basics of historic preservation including the beginning of the historic preservation movement, the legal precedent for preservation, and the theories that determine how preservation occurs. This course will use case studies to further illustrate the topics discussed.

Lewis Mumford on the City 6: The City and the Future

This short documentary film is the sixth and final installment of a series hosted by Lewis Mumford, an American historian, sociologist, philosopher, and literary critic, whose studies in the 20th century included attention to cities and architecture that persists in influence into the present day.

Lewis Mumford on the City 5: The City as Man's Home

In this fifth episode of the series, Mumford begins his exploration of the city during a period of rapid transformation during the Industrial Revolution, when old cities grew quickly, new cities sprang up in the countryside, and the wealthy fled to the countryside, neglecting the health and prosperity of those who stayed behind.

Lewis Mumford on the City 4: The Heart of the City

The "Heart of the City" advocates for the compact, historic centers of cities as places of adventure and culture, which, Mumford warns, are in danger of vanishing. For context and historical perspective, Mumford traces the evolution of cities from the Medieval cities showcased in the third part of the film series, to the Baroque Age, which were shaped by a preoccupation with power and order, and into the 19th century, when commercial forces began to carve up cities in a trend that reached its highest pitch with the massive skyscrapers of the 20th century

Lewis Mumford on the City 3: The City and Its Region

This short documentary film is the third part of a larger series hosted by Lewis Mumford, an American historian, sociologist, philosopher, and literary critic whose studies in the 20th century included attention to cities and architecture that influences the study and planning of cities into the present day. This film takes a broader view of cities, expanding to the regional level and warning about the ill effects of the sprawling forms that most U.S. cities took on during the mid-20th century, erasing pastoral landscapes and rural communities and undermining the benefits of cities.

Lewis Mumford on the City 2: The City - Cars or People?

This short documentary film is the second part of a larger series hosted by Lewis Mumford, an American historian, sociologist, philosopher, and literary critic whose studies in the 20th century included attention to cities and architecture that persists in influence into the present day.

Lewis Mumford on the City 1: The City - Heaven and Hell

This short documentary film is the first part of a larger series hosted by Lewis Mumford, an American historian, sociologist, philosopher, and literary critic, who wrote the book The City in History on which this film is based. The film originally aired in 1963. This first film in the series uses historic footage from all over the world for a kind of meditative effect, punctuated with Mumford's philosophical observations on the past, present, and future of cities.

Warning: Some graphic images appear in the last third of this film.

Classical Location Theory

This course traces the key theories and conceptual models that have been developed to explain why economic activities tend to locate where they do.

City Dreamers

The film "City Dreamers," directed by Joseph Hillel and released in 2018, tells the story of four women designers who worked to shape North American cities throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century.

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth

The 2011 documentary film “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth” documents the rapid rise and fall of a housing complex in St. Louis. Pruitt-Igoe became a symbol for the failure of public housing policy in the late 20th century.