Cities are our future. More than half the world’s population lives in cities. We have thousands of years of experience with building cities, but even today some cities thrive while others go bankrupt. Some cities seem to have “soul” while others do not. The course will explore the many reasons why people are attracted to cities and the factors that contribute to the development of healthy, economically successful cities with happy populations. The course will cover the cities of the world, but we will also look at the cities of nomadic cultures, like Bishkek. We will have readings, videos, lectures, and tours of the City of Bishkek. Students will be expected to keep a journal, help solve a real-world design problem, and participate in a real-world community activist project.
Good design supports the unique identity of a city and can contribute to the concept of the urban “soul.” Design appears in structures large and small, from the pattern of streets in Barcelona to the Gaudi-design tiles embedded in the sidewalks, or the design of manhole cover that provides access to the city’s hidden infrastructure. Students in this course will study examples of good and bad urban design and learn how to use the tools of designers to create beautiful, inspiring works.
Commons are public spaces in cities where people meet, socialize, play, exchange information, and build relationships. When a Commons is well designed, people tend to spend a lot of time there, creating what sociologists call “social capital.” When the public spaces of a city are empty of life, social bonds are weak and it is difficult to organize neighbors to take action to protect, develop, and beautiful their shared spaces.
This course focuses on several types of common spaces in the City of Bishkek: the courtyards in the centers of apartment building complexes, intersections where small shops congregate, the borders of rivers that flow through the city, and pathways among the buildings that help residents travel in safety and enjoy serendipitous meetings as they walk their babies, ride their bikes, and walk to school.
Students will choose a public space in the City of Bishkek to work on. Students will evaluate the situation and collect data on the community’s needs. Working with an architect and other professional urban planners, the students will develop design solutions for the problems identified by the residents.
Classroom work will include instruction on Project Management. Students will learn project management tools, including development of project specifications, Work Breakdown Structures, scheduling tools like GANTT charts and Critical Path Method (CPM), Budgeting, fundraising, and teamwork. As a team, the students will develop a budget for their redesign project, a funding proposal, and a plan for implementing the project.
This course is the story of the two basic strategies in architectural practice and thinking. Self-organized architecture in historical contexts and master planned architecture of cities, urbanized environments. So called Architecture without architects and architecture as a rigorous professional discipline. Two different strategies and their coexistence. Pure architectural Utopias and historically self-organized cities. Architecture of grand narratives, ideologies, and architecture of emergent strategies. The course focuses on two main objects; bottom-up-architecture and top-down-architecture, their historical contexts, and formal aspects, and their symbiosis. Going through historical periods of architecture we will see in parallel these two basic kinds of architecture, the central and the marginal. How they developed each other, destroyed each other, merged one into the other and gave birth to new movements in architecture, such as modernism, postmodernism and others.
In 2018, the Earth has nearly 4.2 billion city dwellers and according to the latest demographic projections of the United Nations, 2.5 billion more will live in cities by 2050. This significant increase in the urban population raises many issues regarding the use of space and the living conditions of citizens, particularly in terms of environmental conservation. In this context, the easiest « solution » is often to destroy green spaces or to reduce their area in order to make room for housing, shops and roads. But what are the consequences on the living environment, the health and the social life of people living in cities? Shouldn’t we protect and foster nature in urban areas? If so, shouldn’t we favor long-term – that is, sustainable – solutions that incorporate green spaces into urban development strategies? Would it not be better to rely on these green spaces to develop a green economy in cities?
This course will first define urban green spaces in a broad sense before looking at a variety of relevant concepts such as urban tree, green and blue corridors. We will survey the latest research on trees and examine several examples of green zones in the world in order to provide answers to various questions previously asked. Several practical aspects will be addressed such as: tree planting, tree-tree interactions, tree-insect interactions, and waste management in green spaces.
The main focus of the course will be the project of protection and renaturation of the Karagachevaya Rosha Park in Bishkek, implemented by the French-Kyrgyz Association of Ecotourism in partnership with the American University of Central Asia. Students who successfully complete this course will receive a certificate of participation in a project certified by the Conference of the Parties (COP21) that was held in Paris, France, from 30 November to 12 December 2015.
In this course, students will learn the basics of architectural drawing and rendering. They will start by learning the rules of perspective from drawing simple plaster figures. These exercises will also teach them the basic skills of composing the drawing on paper, linear drawing, and shading. We will then draw more complex still-life compositions before we take students outside of the classroom to draw building interiors and exteriors, and streetscapes. As they learn plein air drawing, they will also learn several styles of architectural rendering. Throughout the semester, students will do a lot of regular sketching in their diaries; by the end of the term they should be able to complete fairly complex architectural renderings using different media.
In this course, students will learn what Urban Planning is as a profession: how it has evolved; what urban planners do; what kind of problems they address; what theories they use; what instruments they employ; how they work with various stakeholders involved in urban and regional development projects, etc. The course will cover all main urban planning themes, such as land-use planning, community planning, transportation planning, environmental planning, economic planning, etc.
Urban Planning as a field was developed in the West; it is new in Kyrgyzstan and it is not taught in the local architectural and urban design schools. That is why, one of the main tasks of the course will be to help students understand how urban planning ideas and practices from the Western context can be applied in the local Central Asian urban and regional settings.
Building on the required course in the basics of Geographic Information Systems, students will learn about how mapping systems are being used to plan, understand, and manage urban spaces. Students will study example analyses of the City of Bishkek and develop their own projects that could involve planning, sociology, the natural environment, infrastructure, transportation systems, and more. The course will require lab work in the computer centers. Projects developed in this course can lead to development of a senior thesis.
This course offers students with the opportunity to learn about energy and its importance for the prosperity of cities. The course will highlight the benefits from and driving forces for wider adoption of sustainable energy and provide students with an overview of technologies, business models, policy and regulations related to energy in cities. Through enquiry, students will learn how energy interventions can contribute to addressing urban challenges such as safety and security, air pollution, and even public budget deficits.
Students will also learn how cities can encourage investments and entrepreneurship into sustainable energy and promote responsible behavior of urban energy consumers. As part of the course, students will also get a chance to acquaint themselves with innovations and initiatives from around the world and recent projects in the area of sustainable energy in Central Asia.
In this course, students will learn how cities function and what happens “behind the scenes”. First of all, they will learn about all the main elements of urban infrastructure: roads, water supply, sewage, gas, electricity, central heating, and irrigation. They will learn about this on the best examples of infrastructural projects in cities around the world and then focus on the infrastructure of cities in Central Asia. In the second half of the course, students will learn how urban infrastructure and other urban projects are administered: what state and private institutions are engaged, how cities are financed, what main laws regulate urban development, how different urban actors work together, etc.
The coursework will be accompanied by field trips to the major institutions responsible for urban infrastructure in Bishkek, so that students can see for themselves how these various plants work. In addition, students will read critical perspectives on infrastructure and administration, particularly in relation to social Inequality, environmental sustainability, and corruption.
A GIS system is a computer system for capturing spatial data and presenting the data as maps. Working with tools like ArcGIS, students will learn how to gather, enter, and manipulate geographic information in order to visualize and better understand urban and environmental issues. For example, traffic patterns, zoning of land in cities, water catchments, nature preserves, demographics, wildlife habitats, and forest management
Urban economics is broadly the economic study of urban areas; as such, it involves using the tools of economics to analyze urban issues such as crime, education, public transit, housing, and local government finance.
ID: SOC 343
Cities are the main living environment for modern people. It is projected that by 2050 the majority of world’s population will be residing in cities, reversing the situation that existed just a century ago. Social scientists, therefore, view cities as social laboratory and as contested ground on which modern economic and political life unfolds. In this light understanding how cities are produced by social and economic forces as well as such political questions as “What does a just city look like?” , “Who do the cities belong to?”, “Who decides how cities should develop?”
Urban Psychology is quite new avenue of interest within Urban Studies. For many years, cities were considered in different ways, but these considerations have rarely included people. Sociology came on board first, starting with the study of connections, networks and other aspects of social life in cities. Environmental Psychology looked at the urban environment and drew some conclusions about city life as well. Still we know only a little about psychological specifics of urban territories. This course is aimed at understanding what and how we can study about Urban Psychology. It includes some readings and methodological observations as well as several research projects that students should conduct by themselves studying the psychological effects of urban life. The learning outcome of the course will develop and support students’ analytical thinking and skills to provide connections between architectural, infrastructural, social and economic factors and subjective experience of people living in the cities (in terms of psychological knowledge). The issues of mental health, interpersonal and inter-group communications, resilience to different problems and power relations will be focused on during the classes and independent students’ work.
This is a practical hands-on course that teaches students main technical skills such as drafting, drawing, 3D modeling and model-making. Students will learn reading and producing maps to scale; drafting urban design and architectural plans on paper and using AutoCad; drawing building facades and architectural perspectives; producing 3-D models using SketchUp; rendering 3-D views using watercolor, markers, or special software; making paper and cardboard models of buildings and urban spaces. These basic skills will help students understand how to work with existing urban planning and urban design documentation, express their visions of urban spaces in traffic form, and illustrate their urban and regional development ideas.
American University of Central Asia
7/6 Aaly Tokombaev Street
Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic 720060
Tel.: +996 (312) 915000 + Еxt.
Fax: +996 (312) 915 028
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