Course description
Modern urban planning and design as a scientific discipline and practice has its origin in the realization that traditional cities and settlement system fail to respond to the implications of the industrial revolution such as mass migration from the countryside to cities, fast growing cities around industrial installations, collapse of urban infrastructures and the like. Attempting to respond to these multi-facets problems, urban planning and design evolved as an interdisciplinary domain engaging urban studies and architecture, history, public administration and political science, urban geography as well as engineering. As a consequence, from its early days its evolving discourse was associated with a debate regarding the approach that should dominate the field: should it be oriented to the humanities? Architecture? the social sciences? engineering? The result of this ongoing debate is that the discipline has developed as a pendulum between periods during which the field was dominated by the humanities and social science versus periods during which the field was dominated by attempts to treat urban planning as design as a science and its practice as a kind of urban social engineering.

It is common to identify four paradigmatic movements of this pendulum: The 1^st half of the 20^th century was dominated by what Peter Hall in Cities of tomorrow has described as a utopian planning with figures such as Haward and Geddes in the UK, Le Corbusier in France and Mumford in the US.

Then since mid-20^th century, following the so-called quantitative revolution, the pendulum moved to the other pole with attempts to transform the study of cities planning and design into a science of cities with its rational comprehensive planning and design. This urban science paradigm dominated for two decades just to be replaced by its negation – social theory oriented urban studies dominated on the one hand by structuralist-Marxist approaches and phenomenological-humanistic on the other. Finally, since end 20^th century and the first quarter of the 21^st we are witnessing two parallel currents: social theory oriented Post-modern approaches versus sciences-oriented complexity theories of cities (CTC) with very little communication between the two.

The aim of this course is to follow the above paradigmatic movements of the planning and design pendulum and explore the possibility for a unifying theory and approach to cities, urbanism, planning and design. – A unification that is crucial to deal with the urban and environmental problems of the 21st century in the age of the Anthropocene.

Syllabus

In line with the above, the 14 lectures of the course are planned to develop in four sequential parts, when the last two meetings are devoted to students' presentations:

Part I: From its origin to utopian planning

1. The origin of modern town and city planning
2. The interplay between the two cultures of urban planning and design.
3. Utopian planning: Howard, Geddes, Corbusier,

Part II: The science of cities and its Planning and design

4. Rational comprehensive planning
5. Lindblom's "Muddling through" and Advocacy planning

Part III: Social theory-oriented planning and design

6. The SMH revolution: Harvey – planning the ideology
7. SMH planning and design
8. Postmodern planning
9. Communicative and strategic planning and design

Part IV: Complexity theories of cities, planning and design

10. Complexity, and complexity theories of cities
11. Complexity, self-organization, planning and design
12. Planning and design in cities as hybrid complex systems. 13-14 Students' presentations

Evaluation criteria

• 10% Attendance and participation
• 10% Individual out of class discussion with professor
• 10% Oral presentations in class
• 70% Written final research paper

References *

Batty, M. (2013). The new Science of Cities. MIT Cambridge Mass.

Bettencourt L.M.A (2021). Introduction to Urban Science: Evidence and Theory of Cities as Complex Systems. MIT Cambridge Mass.

Portugali J. Ed. (2021). Handbook on Cities and Complexity. Edward Elgar Publishing. https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/handbook-on-cities-and-complexity-9781789900118.html

Portugali J. (2025). The Second Urban Revolution: Complexity, cognition and the view from the Israeli-Palestinian periphery. Edward Elgar Publishing. https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/the-second-urban-revolution-9781035350117.html

Haken H, Portugali J. (2021). Synergetic cities: Information, Steady state and phase transition: Implications to urban scaling, smart cities and planning. Springer nature. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-030-63457-5

* More detailed bibliography can be found in the above books.

Course duration: 40 hours of tuition
Credits equivalence: 6 ECTS

Last updated: August 7, 2026