What can the history of urban neighborhoods reveal about the origins of planning practices that continue to shape cities today? This talk examines the history of urban lowland neighborhoods in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It focuses on the changing spatial organization of the American city in relation to landscape structure, describing how conceptions of unhealthy places and people figured into the early development or “pre-history” of city planning in the United States. Examining the trajectory of four neighborhoods, it traces how early urban development patterns and planning practices influenced zoning, redlining, slum clearance, highway construction, and urban renewal.
Steven T. Moga is an urban planner and interdisciplinary historian of the American landscape. An Associate Professor at Smith College, he chairs the Landscape Studies Program and teaches courses on urban landscapes, photography as method, cultural heritage, and urban ecological design. Dr. Moga earned his Ph.D. in urban and regional planning from MIT; he has taught at Smith since 2014. He is the author of Urban Lowlands: A History of Neighborhoods, Poverty, and Planning, part of the series Historical Studies of Urban America from the University of Chicago Press. His published research articles and review essays can be found in the Journal of Planning History, Journal of Urban History, Journal of the American Planning Association, and Journal of Planning Education and Research.
This event is approved for 1 AICP CM credit
This series was created in partnership with OSUCCC-James and Nationwide Children's Hospital