Asian Cities: Today and Tomorrow
Examines current themes relating to rapid urbanization in Asia. With enormous diversity within its sub-regions, Asia and its cities such as Mumbai, Shanghai, Manila, and Jakarta, are home to some of the richest businessmen in the world while at the same time socio-economic inequality is rising rapidly. These cities are also notorious for their vast slums with large numbers of people living in deplorable conditions without access to basic sanitations and services.
Applying interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives, this course embraces the complexity and ambiguity that is the Asian city. Focusing on cities like Delhi, Hong Kong, Taipei, Karachi, Astana and others, this course will provide students with substantive knowledge on contemporary trends of urbanization, urban development and the various scholarly approaches to understanding Asian cities and current theoretical debates, including those that challenge western-centric approaches to understanding urban change in the region.
The course is organized as a service-learning studio, in coordination with other faculty and students in China and local community and social-entrepreneurial initiatives. Students practice different methods of cross-cultural engagement, including community asset mapping, participatory rural appraisal (PRA), design “charrettes” and other rapid, inclusive, interdisciplinary and intercultural team-based design and planning exercises.
This Winter Quarter Studio program offers students the unique opportunity to study in Chandigarh India, one of the most renowned modern cities of the world, designed by Le Corbusier in the 1950’s. Students will have an opportunity to use Chandigarh College of Architecture as a base while also being introduced to local professional and academic resources in Chandigarh.
Design Rescue is a landscape architecture studio that examines how landscape architects can engage in the current and long-term recovery efforts in South Asia after the 2004 Tsunami. In the studio, students developed “adaptive prototypes” to support landscape and economic recovery as well as community rebuilding in Aceh, Indonesia.
Managing International Projects
Dr. Lin teaches the elective course Managing International Projects in the Master of Science in Construction Management program. The course is offered in the summer and is designed to augment the basics of domestic project management with information pertinent to the global project environment outside the United States, particularly risks involved from emerging markets such as selective countries from Asia, Middle East, and Latin America.
This month-long field studio worked with one of the most dynamic and resilient community organizations in Taiwan, the Meinung People’s Association (MPA), to develop design and planning strategies for the township. Students from UW formed interdisciplinary and cross-cultural teams with local activists, university students and residents to develop catalytic design projects as well as planning frameworks to address composite sets of urban and rural issues.
UW Exploration Seminar: Asian Urbanism
UW Exploration Seminar is a 3-week, 5-credit early fall study abroad program that takes students out of campus and outside the country for a unique learning experience. This traveling seminar engages in a close-up examination of the landscapes and fabric of selected Asian cities. Since 2007, the program has traveled to Hong Kong, Kobe, Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo.