Imaging the City: The Place of Media in City Design and Development
This MIT OpenCourseWare course examines how cities are perceived, represented, and reshaped through visual media rather than direct sensory experience alone. Starting from Kevin Lynch's 1960 study The Image of the City, the course traces how planners, designers, and institutions have moved from simply analyzing how people mentally map urban space to actively constructing narratives about places through film, photography, advertising, and other visual media. Topics include how city images shift over time, who controls those images, and how urban, suburban, and regional identities get built or rebranded for economic and political purposes. Course materials include readings, lecture notes, and assignments drawn from MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning, freely available through MIT OpenCourseWare with no enrollment or certificate. The course suits students interested in urban design, media studies, or the politics of place representation.