Course Syllabus
An urban area grows and changes to keep pace with the changing shelter, work, recreation, shopping, and travel needs of its inhabitants. In accommodating these human activities, land is consumed, and current trends suggest that land in the United States is being consumed by expanding urban areas at an unprecedented rate. In the St. Louis metropolitan region, for instance, the urbanized area grew between 1990 and 1996 by around 50% though population grew by less than 1%. The net growth in regional population hides the very significant movement of people within the region, a churning that consumes ever increasing amounts of land.
This consumption of land triggers several questions:
- What do we do on the land? How much land do we use? What is the type, manner, and intensity of our use of land?
- What are the environmental, economic, and social consequences of land use change?
Physical planning--managing the way land is used and reused to support human activities--has been a significant and longstanding part of a professional planner's responsibilities. Physical planning in the United States is typically a function of local government. Site planning, on the other hand, is where decisions--specific and detailed ones--are actually made about how a particular site is developed. It is typically carried out by design professionals representing private interests. Physical planners use land-use controls (ordinances and regulations) along with site plan review to shape site planning decisions.
Course Objective
This course seeks to prepare you to deal with a variety of complexities that characterize physical planning through the site plan review task. Rather than learn about issues at an arm's length, you engage intensely with site plan review and through this experience learn about the possibilities and limitations in physical planning.
By the end of this course you should:
- know enough about site planning to be effective physical planners
- understand the process of site plan review
- know how to work with digital spatial data and create effective maps
If you believe you have had sufficient prior course work or work experience that covers the course objectives, please see the course instructors about the possibility of waiving all or part of the course.
Course Organization
To achieve these objectives, the course brings together some preliminary work and four components all built around site plan review and related as shown in the diagram below:
- Preliminaries
- Natural systems analysis
- Site engineering analysis
- Context analysis
- Design analysis
All components will be worked on individually. While you are encouraged to discuss the work with each other and with the course instructors, the work and material you hand in must be your own.
Course content will be covered in lectures and discussions, labs, tutorials, and a final project (site plan review). Attendance in tutorial sessions is optional; if you have already dealt with the material or feel confident of being able to handle the material covered on your own.
Course Grade
The course grade earned will be the weighted average of the following components:
- Class participation (10%)
- Preliminaries (10%)
- Natural systems (20%)
- Site engineering (15%)
- Context analysis (5%)
- Design analysis (30%)
- Plan review report (10%)
Class participation grades will reflect your command of the assigned readings and contribution to class discussion. Attendance is mandatory, and any unexcused absence will reflect in your participation grade. All other grades will depend on the quality of ideas generated and of the presentation of these ideas, on the effectiveness of responses to comments, and on the timely completion of work. Letter grades assigned are to be interpreted as follows:
A (4.0-5.0): Excellent.
Goes beyond requirements
B (3.0-4.0): Good.
Satisfies all the requirements
C (2.0-3.0): Average.
Satisfies most requirements
D (1.0-2.0): Poor.
Does not meet many requirements
E (0.0-1.0): Failed.
Does not meet most requirements
Letter grades will be modified by a '+' or a '-' when appropriate. These modifiers signify the upper and lower one-third of the scale. The course grade will be determined by converting the letter grade on each course component to a number and computing the weighted average of the actual points scored in each section.
Materials
The required textbook for this course is available from the Illini Bookstore and is:
Andersen, Larz. 2000. Planning the Built Environment. Planners Press. (ISBN 1-884829-43-0)
(This book is also on reserve in the CPLA Library and is available from APA's Bookservice at a discount for APA members.)
Additional assigned readings are available online (access only using NetID and password) and can be printed or read on screen. Additional stationery and other materials (about $50 worth) may be purchased from time to time.
This course involves considerable computer-based work. You must have an account on the Department's network and be able to use the network. If you do not have an account or you need an introduction to using the network, please see me right after the first class meeting.
Learning Philosophy
This course is designed around the idea of learning by doing. You grasp concepts and develop skills by applying them in a real-world situation rather than only reading about them. You engage your classmates and instructors in conversations about the work. While this is often a more effective way to learn the material covered in this course, you must expect to spend more time working on tasks than you would in a course with only reading and homework assignments.
All of the course material is available on the Web, and it is critical that you read and understand all of this material. This will make classroom time more effective and enhance your experience in the course. Please inform the course insructor if there are any errors or discrepancies on this Web site.
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