Course Proposal: Place Vs. Space

[Brian Livingston]

Hey all:

I wanted to check in with the Guild regarding a course I am planning on offering, beginning within the next couple of weeks. Titled Places Vs. Space, this course is the first part of what is now planned as a four course series looking at the various dimensions of Urban Design as related to public spaces. Related topics include place making, topophilia, and visual aesthetics.

This course is derived from the book Public Places, Urban Spaces, by Carmona, Heath, Oc, and Tiesdell. I will attempt to present some of the key premises of this exemplary text and relate them back to and illustrate them with real and second life instances. Although this is certainly not a required text, I do highly recommend the book for those looking for a more in depth examination of the topic or those who may be interested in "reading along" with or ahead of the courses.

My plan is to finish drafting the first session within the next few days and present it to any interested members of the guild for review and critique before offering it to the public as a whole.

Any thoughts? On a side note, I have commandeered Classroom #1 to work on setting up a class space, but can clear it out pretty easily if anyone needs the space. Otherwise, feel free to take a poke around

--BL

[Dnate Mars]

This is great!!! If you need any thing including set up of help, please let me know, and I will do my best to make sure this class runs smoothly. Do you have dates and times set yet, or is it still in the air?

[Brian Livingston]

I'm in the process of drafting up the first session. The plan is to probably allow two weeks between sessions, at least for the first offering.

Sessions will be offered at least twice during their respective periods, on different days and times to best reach as many people as possible. Probably something along the lines of a Tuesday Evening, around 4 pm SLT and Weekends, perhaps Saturday Mornings.

Once I have the courses fully drawn up, I'll be able to reoffer them, with relevant updates of course, at the guild's discretion.

I have a few other course offerings in mind, but I figure I'll start here and see what happens

--BL

[Jon Seattle]

This is a wonderful idea. Its a course I would love to take as well!

[Diderot Mirabeau]

[quote="Brian Livingston":2ii8chtt]This course is derived from the book Public Places, Urban Spaces, by Carmona, Heath, Oc, and Tiesdell.[/quote:2ii8chtt]

I just ordered this book from the library

A thing that I'm concerned about in this regard is what one can do when designing urban spaces to minimise the potentially disruptive impact of neighbour 'architecture' that seems to be one of the ultimate hazards of building in Second Life. I realise covenants is one way out of the misery but from a design/planning perspective are there other generic levers that one may utilise pre-emptively?

[Brian Livingston]

Hello!

Just as an update, I am finishing up the material that I plan to present and should be finished within a week. Part of the delay has been a change in some of my source materials. I am still going to use the previously mentioned book, especially in future lectures. However, I am going to be focusing, at least in this first lecture, on the basis of thought for Space and Place and how the human senses shape our experience and determine how we assess meaning and value to our surroundings. As such, I am adding the following book to my list:

Tuan, Yi-Fu. [u:3pjejayd]Space and Place[/u:3pjejayd] ISBN: 0816638772

Again, it is not expected that anyone obtain this book. However, both to give proper credit to my sources and to provide interested readers with some books that I've found compelling, I'm listing them here. I would like to gather interest about a possible Urban Studies book club of sorts, where in between courses (given that it takes me about 2 weeks to develop a course), we could meet to discuss a given chapter of an Urban Studies text. Ideally, we would be discussing Tuan's book, especially a few interesting chapters which I have yet to work into my lecture.

--BL