Urban Housing: Paris, London, New York
MIT OpenCourseWare traces how three cities solved the same problem, where to put people, with different architectural answers. The course follows the French hotel, the London row house, and the New York tenement and apartment building from the seventeenth century onward, showing how each form shaped its city's streets and blocks. Lectures move into the twentieth century to cover housing reform movements, the London County Council's public housing programs, the modernist planning ideas of CIAM, and the rise of American public housing agencies. Materials include lecture notes, readings, and assignments drawn from MIT's architecture curriculum, aimed at students who already have some grounding in architectural or urban history. The throughline is comparative: each housing type reveals different assumptions about density, class, and the role of government in providing shelter. Free to audit through MIT OpenCourseWare, with no certificate offered.