URD1509H F
Instructor: Alfredo Landaeta
Meeting Section: L0101
Friday, 12:00PM - 3:00PM

Regardless of the reasons we decide to become urban dwellers (tradition, choice, social inertia, desire for betterment), we all expect cities to provide us with a minimum of services, experiences, and opportunities. Looking closer at Commerce and Entertainment as key components of cities and how we perceive them, the course will explore how the synergies between the two, as mediated by technology, contribute to the shaping of the urban experience.

Cities traditionally provided a gamut of public and private spaces, calibrated to accommodate different activities and services. These spaces have been the backdrop for social and community interactions, shopping, socializing, and entertainment. As with anything urban, these arrangements have always been fluid, evolving and changing, resulting in hybridized situations.

The sharing economy is changing our understanding of ownership. Smaller, denser, more diverse, more connected, more interdependent, all describe the predominant ways in which most of us live urban lives. Retail happens now online. The latest blockbusters can now be enjoyed in our living rooms. For that matter, even before COVID made workplaces out of our homes any coffee shop with an internet connection was an extension of our offices. Technology has been (and still is) a powerful agent of change, creating new dynamic relations between the different components of urban environments.

While not the only factor, the interplay between commerce and entertainment contributes to the creation of a social and sensorial infrastructure that greatly helps in defining the character of successful urban places. Access – or lack of it – to basic community spaces, retail, cultural events and programs, and entertainment opportunities is a strong indicator of the quality of life of our communities and a predictor of the wellbeing of the population.

While on a forced hiatus for the last couple of years, is clear that the shared urban experience is one of the key aspects of what makes a city a city. In a world where anything can be obtained online and delivered to your door, it is only the environments that are imbued with content and experiences that speak to our interests and passions and that help us make real connections with others, the ones that will capture our attention and where we will choose to spend our time.

The course will be based on a combination of active research, discussion, and presentations. It is intended to be an exploratory seminar on the evolving relationship and synergies between commerce and retail, entertainment and culture, technology, and society, and how these synergies impact urban environments.

Organized in 3 modules, the class will explore what defines the “experience” of urban spaces:

Commerce has traditionally been a driving force for the very existence of urban environments, now, as before, is of being transformed by technology. As one of the forces at the core of traditional urban centers, Commerce has marked every aspect of our understanding of urban life. In particular, the evolution of retail and retail spaces have had profound impacts on urban life, on development patterns, and on the rise and fall and rise again of cities and neighborhoods.

Entertainment and Culture, understanding them as the activities that bring joy, amusement, and cultural fulfilment, are seminal in the way we relate at an emotional level to urban environments. It can be argued that if commerce made cities, leisure made city life. The duality between entertainment and culture ranges from just plain fun to the pursuit of knowledge and personal and societal betterment, in whatever fashion it might be understood.

Technology and Innovation have upended traditional flows and relations between one and the other, changing in fundamental ways the way we shop and consume. If for better or worse, is still to be decided. But can we really live in a digital bubble? Are digital communities a substitute for face to face interactions? While technology has played a pivotal role in the development of urban environments, fostering change, and transforming our relationship with cities, the impact of the rate of change and the depth of disruption we have witnessed in the last years is only beginning to be understood and will have a powerful impact in, paraphrasing Sir Winston Churchill, how we shape cities and then how we are shaped by them.

By researching, discussing, and engaging in an open and fluid conversation on these subjects it is expected that students develop their personal positions on the subject.

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, students will be expected to:

• Have improve their understanding on the radical transformations taking place in commerce and retail and its impact on urban life.
• Develop critical positions on the factors that have influenced leisure, entertainment and culture.
• Gain an understanding of how technology is playing a transformative role in how we socialize and interact with each other and how that is transforming the conception of public and private.