This is an intensive reading seminar on contemporary conceptual challenges in planning and urban development, with an emphasis on urban intellectual history and critical social theory.  It is intended for both doctoral students and master's students interested in deepening their understanding of ideas in planning, urban theory, and urban history.  Themes may include: the rise of the 20th Century planning thought in its broader social context; urban political economy; modernism and the failure of social engineering; postmodernism and the privatization of public space; suburbanization, regionalism and new urbanism; the impact of technological innovation on cities; networks and the information city; globalization and the persistence of the local; utopianism; and competing visions of the market and the state.