Rome undergraduate planning workshop: A reflexive approach to neighborhood studies

Abstract

This workshop attempts to bridge the gap between theory and practice by using a reflexive pedagogical approach. The workshop takes undergraduate American urban studies students and assists them through a structured progression of pedagogical exercises critical to an understanding of place and urban processes. The pedagogy draws from theories of reflexive and experiential learning from Argysis and Schön, Kolb and Lynch, to help students overcome challenges to learning in an unfamiliar cultural/linguistic environment. This reflexive approach emphasizes the importance of structuring exercises combining experiential learning, observation, coding and reflection to help students develop a practically-oriented understanding of the role of planning in a complex urban environment.

Keywords::

• pedagogy
• undergraduate studio
• Rome
• reflexive and experiential learning

Notes

^1. As college juniors, students in the Rome workshop have very limited experience with planning theory or practice and for many, as Goldsmith notes, Rome is their first encounter with a large city.

^2. Reference to the Giustiniano Imperatore plan can be found on various web sites, perhaps the most comprehensive being http://www.architettiroma.it/archivio.aspx?id = 7550. The original plan involved the replacement of the crooked buildings with a formally elegant butterfly patterned street grid, and attractive physical rendering by one of Rome's most distinguished architects. Of the four sections originally planned (A, B, C, D) and widely publicized in the early 2000s only section A had been completed by 2013.

^3. The situation changed significantly after the 1970s with so many examples of “brutalist” architecture, such as Rome's notorious kilometer-long public housing estate known as Corviale (Coccia, 2001). Yet notwithstanding this historical evolution, public housing in some periods of Italian history represented, as our students found, a high standard of urban quality.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gregory Smith

Gregory Smith is a visiting critic at Cornell University in Rome. His work focuses on public space, urban planning and urban narratives.

Mildred E. Warner

Mildred Warner is a Professor of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University. Her work focuses on social and economic policy and local government reform.

Carlotta Fioretti

Carlotta Fioretti has a PhD in Urban Policy and Planning. She teaches for Cornell University in Rome and she is Postdoctoral fellow at Roma Tre. Her work focuses on urban regeneration, social inclusion and immigrant policy.

Claudia Meschiari

Claudia Meschiari has a PhD in Urban Planning from Roma Tre. She teaches in the Cornell in Rome program and her research focuses on cultural approaches to urban regeneration in Italy.