11.235
What We Think About When We Think About Cities
Using a critical reading of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities , facilitates a deeper understanding and appreciation of cities and the urban planning and policymaking processes that form them. Concepts such as Kevin Lynch's "Good City Form" and Henri Lefebvre's "The Right to the City" ¿ along with case studies of Boston and Paris, and readings and reflections on a wide range of cities around the world ¿ are used to approach the overarching and fundamental question of what makes a city. Explores the important roles of historic preservation, urban renewal, and the topic of urban adaptation (particularly in the post-pandemic 21st century context).
Fall 2009 · Analyzing Projects and Organizations
Topics
- Introduction
- I. What drives organizational behavior?
- II. Street-level bureaucrats (SLBs)
- III. Professionals, para-professionals, insiders, outsiders
- IV. Public management reforms: models, case studies, assessments
- V. Back to labor standards, this time with “stateless” compliance
- Guest: Professor Richard Locke, Sloan School of Management and Political Science Department
- VI. International organizations—inside the organization and out
- Guest: Peter Houtzager, Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, Brighton, U.K.
- Student Presentations
Readings
- Kelman, Steve. Unleashing Change: A Study of Organizational Renewal in Government . Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2005, pp. 1-58, chapters 1-3. ISBN: 9780815748991.
- Tendler, Judith. “Research Questions for the Ford Foundations Innovations-in-Government Programs: Documentation, Evaluation, and Dissemination.” MIT, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 1998.
- Fox, Jonathan. “Introduction,” and “The Sandwich Strategy: Opening from Above Meets Mobilization from Below.” In The Politics of Food in Mexico: State Power and Social Mobilization . La Jolla, CA: Center for U.S-Mexican Studies, 1993, pp. 1-8 and 151-205. ISBN: 9780801427169.
- March, James G. “Decisions in Organizations and Theories of Choice.” In Perspectives on Organization Design and Behavior . Edited by Andrew H. Van de Ven and William F. Joyne. New York, NY: Wiley, 1981, pp. 205-248. ISBN: 9780471093589.
- March, James. A Primer on Decision Making: How Decisions Happen . New York, NY: The Free Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780029200353. (Preface, Chapter 1 “Limited Rationality,” pp. 1-35; rest of chapter optional.)
- Wilson, James Q. Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It . New York, NY: Basic Books, 1989. ISBN: 9780465007851. (Preface and chapters 3-6 required.)
- Tendler, Judith. “Executive Summary and Reinventing the Projects.” In New Lessons from Old Projects: The Workings of Rural Development in Northeast Brazil . A World Bank Operations Evaluation Study, 1993, pp. xix-xxvi and 14-33. ISBN: 9780821325124.
- Roe, Emery M. “Except-Africa: Postscript to a Special Session on Development Narratives.” World Development 23, no. 6 (1995): 1065-1069.
- Kaufman, Herbert. The Forest Ranger: A Study in Administrative Behavior . London, UK: RFF Press, 2006. ISBN: 9781933115276. (Required: Chapters 1 “Introduction”, pp. 3-21; Chapter 7 “Conclusion” recommended: Chapter 3, pp. 66-87)
- Maynard-Moody, Steven, and Michael Musheno. Cops, Teachers, Counselors: Stories from the Front Lines of Public Service . Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780472068326. (Required: pp. 3-8 of Chapter 1 “Dealing with Faces”; pp. 97-106 of Chapter 8 “Who are the Worthy”? Optional: pp. 77-96 of Chapter 7 “Putting a Fix on People: Identity, Conduct, and Street-level Work”)
- Lipsky, Michael. “The Critical Role of Street-Level Bureaucrats,” “The Assault on Human Services: Bureaucratic Control, Accountability, and the Fiscal Crises,” and “The Broader Context of Bureaucratic Relations.” In Street Level Bureaucracy, Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services . New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2010, pp. 3-25, 159-179, and 181-191. ISBN: 9780871545442.
- Justice, Judith. “The Invisible Health Worker: The Peon,” and “Sources of Information.” In Policies, Plans People: Culture and Health Development in Nepal. Berkeley , CA: University of California Press, 1986, pp. 101-106. ISBN: 9780520054240.
- Pfeffer, Jeffrey, and Gerald R. Salancik. The External Control of Organizations . Palo Alto, CA: Stanford Business Books, 2003, chapters 1, 4, and 10. ISBN: 9780804747899.
- Coslovsky, Salo. Compliance and Competitiveness: How Prosecutors Enforce Labor and Environmental Laws and Promote Economic Development in Brazil . The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. PhD dissertation, 2002, chapters 1, 2, and 4.
- McKenna, Christopher Davis. “Introduction,” “Creating the Contractor State: Consultants in the American Federal government,” and “Finding Profit in Nonprofits: The influence of Consultants in the Third Sector.” Chapters 4 and 5 in The World’s Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 1-7, 80-110, and 111-144. ISBN: 9780521757591.
- Ban, Carolyn, and Mark Huddleston . “Exporting Administrative Reform to Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union: The Role of the Consultants in Technical Assistance.” Paper prepared for Annual Meeting of the Association of Public Policy and Management, Washington, DC, November, 1999.
- Argyris, Chris. Flawed Advice and the Management Trap . Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780195132861.
- DiMaggio, Paul J., and Walter W. Powell, eds. “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organization Fields.” In T_he New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis_. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. pp. 63-82. ISBN: 9780226677095.
- Meyer, John W., and Brian Rowan. “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony.” In The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Edited by Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991, pp. 54-62 required, rest optional. ISBN: 9780226677095.
- Teaford, Jon C. The Unheralded Triumph: City Government in America, 1870-1900 . Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins Press, 1984, pp. 1-14, 307-314, and skim 132-173, within the chapters entitled, respectively, “Trumpeted Failures and Unheralded Triumphs,” “Triumph with the Taste of Defeat,” and “The Professionals.” ISBN: 9780801830631.
- Woodall, Brian. Japan Under Construction: Corruption, Politics, and Public Works . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996, Introduction and Conclusion, pp. 1-24, and 124-148. ISBN: 9780520088153.
- Kettl, Donald F., and John J. DiIulio, Jr. “Learning from Public and Private Reform?” Chapter 2 in Cutting Government. A Report of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Public Management . Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, May 22, 1995, pp. 27-41 (especially pp. 27-36, and 40-41). ISBN: 9780815749134.
- Seidman, Gay. “Citizens, Markets, and Transnational Labor Activism,” “Labor Rights as Human Rights: Regulation in the Context of a Thinned National State,” “Constructing a Culture of Compliance in Guatemala,” “Citizenship at Work.” Chapters 1, 2, 5, and 6 in Beyond the Boycott: Labor Rights, Human Rights, and Transnational Activism. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007, pp. 1-14; 15-46, 102-131, and 132-144; rest optional. ISBN: 9780871547620.
- Tendler, Judith. Inside Foreign Aid . Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975, chapters 1, 5, and 8, pp. 1-7, 54-72, and 102-110 (rest optional). ISBN: 9780801820168.
- Hirschman, Albert O., and Kermit Gordon. Development Projects Observed . Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1967, Preface + text. ISBN: 9780815736516.
- Rosen, George. Western Economists and Eastern Societies: Agents of Change in South Asia, 1950-1970 . Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins Press, 1985. ISBN: 9780801831874.
- Mallaby, Sebastian. The World’s Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations . London, UK: Penguin Books, 2006. ISBN: 9780143036791.
- McCormick, Dorothy, Winnie Mitullah, and Erick Manga. “Extent and Forms of Donor Proliferation and Coordination in Kenya: the Case of Inclusive Industrialization and Governance Reform, 2000-2005.” Working paper. Kenya, University of Nairobi, Institute for Development Studies, 2007. (Strongly recommended: pp. 1-48; rest optional.)
- Houtzager, Peter P. “Introduction: From Polycentrism to the Polity.” Chapter 1 in Changing Paths: International Development and the New Politics of Inclusion . Edited by Peter Houtzager and Mick Moore. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003, pp. 1-31. ISBN: 9780472030972
- Houtzager, Peter P., with Jonathan Pattenden. “Coalition Building from Below.” Chapter 4 in Changing Paths: International Development and the New Politics of Inclusion . Edited by Peter Houtzager and Mick Moore. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. ISBN: 9780472030972.
- Houtzager, Peter P., and Arnab K. Acharya. “Associations, Active Citizenship, and the Quality of Democracy in Brazil and Mexico.” Forthcoming in Theory and Society , 2010.
- Kruks-Wisner, Gabrielle. “Sea of Change: Seeing the State in Disaster Recovery and Service Delivery.” Department of Political Science, MIT, 2nd year paper, 2008.
Prerequisites & course information
Prereq: None G (Fall) 2-0-7 units
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2009
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.