Students will spend over a week in Avignon, France studying the development of ancient, medieval and modern cities and learning about their role as political, economic and cultural centers. Some key themes explored will be the intersection of physical spaces and cultural values, the tension between individual and collective needs, and the often conflicting goals of different stakeholders, past, present, and future, in an urban community. We will “zoom in” on historical artifacts, monuments, and architecture to examine whose stories they tell and consider how present and future populations will continue to inscribe traces of their presence over their lifetimes. We will “zoom out” to examine how cities embrace their legacies, face their dysfunction, and strive to balance preservation with development.

The students will use the small medieval city of Avignon as one of the study models and also the larger city of Marseille. The students will meet with local entrepreneurs, city officials and urban designers and visit other urban areas and points of interest in the area to get a 360 view of the place and learn about the region and how it became what it is today.