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AVAILABLE | The American City | Complexity & Pattern in the City | Planetizen

The American City, Part 4: Complexity and Pattern in the City course featuring Dr. Mark David Major is now available from Planetizen Courses. The course is approved for 0.75 professional development credits with the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) and Congress for New Urbanism (CNU).

Watch an extended preview here.

The American City, Part 4: Complexity and Pattern in the City
The course discusses the design of the urban pattern in several American cities (Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas, Seattle, St. Louis, Orlando, and Phoenix). The course examines: 1) the synergy between different scales of movement patterned into the urban grid, which contributes to the “urban buzz” of distinctive neighborhoods and places; 2) the large role that local topography plays in allowing, limiting, or denying certain possibilities for urban growth, due to the massive horizontal scale of American cities and the practical necessity of overcoming topographical conditions; and 3) the consequences of government regulations, Euclidean zoning, modern transportation planning, and suburbanization during the post-war period in generating a hierarchal grid logic to the American regular grid planning tradition. The implications of development patterns and land consumption unseen during the history of city building over the previous 10,000 years are discussed.

Click here to purchase the course by subscribing to Planetizen Courses.

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NOW AVAILABLE | The Best of Both Worlds | Architecture & Film, Part 3

Part III of the Architecture and Film course series, “The Best of Both Worlds”, reviews the seductive correspondence between cinema and architecture. Over the last four decades, the film-architecture analogy and startling technological advances, mostly deriving from computer science, have blurred the distinction between cinema and architecture. Collectively, this tends to obscure the most important aspect, which is architecture’s impact on the dual aims of cinema, e.g. narrative and technology. Part III reviews the cinematic use of architectural precedents and typologies in crafting distinctive film-grammars in support of narrative and characterization for extended narratives. The “Architecture and Film” course series more closely examines the frequent role of the built environment in creatively reinforcing or subverting expectations of the audience about cinematic narratives (2.0 hour course). Click here to purchase this course ($14.99)

Key concepts:  extended narratives, science fiction, fantasy, abnormal scale, cultural appropriation, and historical juxtaposition.

Includes a two-hour video presentation and PDFs of the course supplementary material and slide handout.

Part 3 Film and Television Topics
Star Trek, Harry Potter, Blade Runner, The Lord of the Rings, Citizen Kane, Batman, Doctor Who, Inception, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Spellbound, Doctor Strange, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Interstellar, Star Wars, Logan’s Run, Alien, Dune, Battlestar Galactica, Zoolander, The Martian Chronicles, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, District 9

Please note there may be a delay for a couple of hours before you are able to access the course because we have to confirm receipt of payment for each order before completing the purchase.

About the Instructor

mark_v3Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A is an architect and planner with extensive experience in urban planning and design, business management and real estate development, and academia. He is a Professor of Urban Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Mark has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Florida, Georgia Tech, Architectural Association in London, the University of São Paulo in Brazil, and Politecnico di Milano in Italy.

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Support The Outlaw Urbanist Today!

Now Accepting Contributions from Fellow Resistance Fighters
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A, The Outlaw Urbanist Founder

We founded The Outlaw Urbanist almost five years ago. During that time, we have produced more than 220 posts of freely-available content on the blog about architecture and urbanism across a vast range of issues as well as nearly 4,000 tweets on the @OutlawUrbanist Twitter feed.

We have also produced two volumes of the Poor Richard almanac series for architects and planners (available for purchase by clicking on the links to your right) with three more books (American cities, Poor Richard Volume 3, and Collected Essays) on the way. We have also produced more than 20 hours of professional development, continuing education and training classes, either exclusively on The Outlaw Urbanist Courses website or in partnership with Planetizen Courses.

In that time, we have found many valuable allies such as Andy Boenau of Urbanism Speakeasy, the people at Planetizen, and many members of the CNU and Space Syntax communities even as powerful entities with a vested interest (often purposefully obscured) in perpetuating the status quo continue to work against our message. Most definitely, we sometimes feel grind down by this fight; much like Patrick McGoohan’s Number Six in The Prisoner above. However, we often receive encouraging messages from users such as this Canadian academic researcher only last week:

“I am writing you a brief note to say how inspired I am by your blog and manifesto I agree wholeheartedly… I had this great feeling again today when I found your work.”

Such messages are ‘manna from heaven’ for us. However, believe it or not, The Outlaw Urbanist content has been produced on a shoestring budget over the last five years. A reasonable estimate is we spend about $500 per annual in out-of-pocket costs to offer the (mostly) free content on The Outlaw Urbanist. The rest is brain power, elbow grease, and lots, lots, lots and LOTS of time.

We have reached the point where we need to ask for your help. There are a lot of upgrades we would like to implement on The Outlaw Urbanist but for a lack of funds: upgrade our hosting service package to speed up loading of the website, offer a monthly newsletter through the facilities of Paper.il to share more content, jointly produce continuing education courses and podcasts with Urbanism Speakeasy, securing pre-approved credits for courses with various professional organizations (for which we will be charged) and, eventually, switching over to an annual subscription-based platform for The Outlaw Urbanist Courses instead of the current ‘per class’ cost structure.

We have introduced a “Donate with PayPal” button to our content sidebar (at the upper right-hand corner) to enable our users to financially support The Outlaw Urbanist. PayPal allows you to make donations using your debit or credit card.

We are asking for donations to support our continuing efforts. We appreciate receiving any donations, no matter how small or large, for that purpose. We are creating a special category called The Founders Circle for anyone who makes a donation of $1,000 or more on an annual basis, which includes prominent display of your business, personal, or organizational logo with a link to your website.

Please support The Outlaw Urbanist today with your donation!

NOTE: We would be remiss if we did not mention everyone involved with the open resource platforms of WordPress, LearnPress, and many other associated plugins, which indirectly support the efforts of The Outlaw Urbanist. Thank you!

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NOW AVAILABLE | The Architectural Competence in Cinema | Architecture & Film, Part 2

Part 2 of the Architecture and Film course series, “The Architectural Competence in Cinema” (2.0 hour) reviews the seductive correspondence between cinema and architecture. Over the last four decades, the film-architecture analogy and startling technological advances, mostly deriving from computer science, have blurred the distinction between cinema and architecture. Collectively, this tends to obscure the most important aspect, which is architecture’s impact on the dual aims of cinema, e.g. narrative and technology. Part II reviews the cinematic use of architectural precedents and typologies in crafting distinctive film-grammars in support of narrative and characterization. The “Architecture and Film” course series more closely examines the frequent role of the built environment in creatively reinforcing or subverting expectations of the audience about cinematic narratives. Click here to purchase this course ($14.99).

Key concepts:  narrative, scale, historical precedent, architectural typologies, and hyperreality.

Includes a two-hour video presentation and PDFs of the course supplementary material and slide handout.

Part 2 Film and Television Topics
Alien, War of the Worlds, V for Vendetta, Blade Runner, Jaws, Watchmen, Batman, The Rape of Doctor Willis, Superman, The Lady in the Water, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, The Godfather, Game of Thrones, The Lord of the Rings, Baywatch, The Shawshank Redemption, Thor, From Hell, The Lodger, James Bond, Chinatown, Logan’s Run, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Cube, 1984, Divergent, The Truman Show, Pleasantville, Metropolis, V, Independence Day, Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Please note there may be a delay for a couple of hours before you are able to access the course because we have to confirm receipt of payment for each order before completing the purchase.

About the Instructor

mark_v3Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A is an architect and planner with extensive experience in urban planning and design, business management and real estate development, and academia. He is a Professor of Urban Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Mark has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Florida, Georgia Tech, Architectural Association in London, the University of São Paulo in Brazil, and Politecnico di Milano in Italy.

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NOW AVAILABLE | Do Architects Dream of Celluloid Buildings? | Architecture & Film, Part 1

Part 1 of the Architecture and Film course series, “Do Architects Dream of Celluloid Buildings?” (2.0 hour) reviews the seductive correspondence between cinema and architecture. Over the last four decades, the film-architecture analogy and startling technological advances, mostly deriving from computer science, have blurred the distinction between cinema and architecture. Collectively, this tends to obscure the most important aspect, which is architecture’s impact on the dual aims of cinema, e.g. narrative and technology. Part I reviews the conceptual, historical and technological relation between cinema and architecture. The “Architecture and Film” course series more closely examines the frequent role of the built environment in creatively reinforcing or subverting expectations of the audience about cinematic narratives. Click here to purchase this course ($14.99).

Key concepts:  analogy, cinema, language, narrative, representation, technology.

Includes a two-hour video presentation and PDFs of the course supplementary material and slide handout.

Part 1 Film and Television Topics
The Wizard of Oz, A Trip to the Moon, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, The Hunger Games, Friends, New Girl, Planet of the Apes, Alice in Wonderland, Star Trek, To Kill a Mockingbird, Back to the Future, Westworld, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Jurassic Park, The Wedding Singer, The Terminator, Babylon 5, Captain America, Avatar, Battlestar Galactica, It’s a Wonderful Life, Zelig, Forrest Gump, Jupiter Rising, Toy Story, Tron, Resident Evil, Total Recall, The Matrix, A Scanner Darkly, Contagion, American Psycho, Metropolis, Blade Runner

Please note there may be a delay for a couple of hours before you are able to access the course because we have to confirm receipt of payment for each order before completing the purchase.

About the Instructor

mark_v3Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A is an architect and planner with extensive experience in urban planning and design, business management and real estate development, and academia. He is a Professor of Urban Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Mark has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Florida, Georgia Tech, Architectural Association in London, the University of São Paulo in Brazil, and Politecnico di Milano in Italy.

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