This is a project-based, three-credit course that introduces core disciplinary competencies in Physical Planning and Design and engages in the spatialization of socio-environmental and culturally rooted processes in the built environment. Through the engagement with the Detroit RiverStoryLab, the course participates in conversations depicting a multiplicity of approaches and perspectives to the study of the Detroit River as a living cultural landscape. Classes provide a dynamic learning experience integrating lectures, readings and discussions, software tutorials, and meetings with other network members and regional partners.

Open to MArch, MLA, MUD, and MURP students, the course offers a platform for learning, experimentation, critique, conversations with scholars, practitioners, and local groups, and exchange of ideas, enabling the exploration of specific interests in the field. Your work will build incrementally: in the first third of the semester, you will exercise elements and methods of physical planning and urban design and read, discuss, and critique relevant texts and precedents. Following this stage, you will experiment with thick mapping techniques as a medium to develop critical readings of place and time. Building on these initial stages, your final design project will actively engage in the concept of urban sustainability and socio-environmental storytelling to reflect on contemporary re-urbanization trends, draw cultural critique, and project new imaginaries.