Through urbanization and industrialization, capitalism developed humanity to its greatest expression in history. The capitalist mode of production and the urban systems it produced brought people together in unprecedented ways and compelled them to interact in ways that were not possible in rural regions. But urbanism has been an incomplete and uneven historical process that has led to great disparities between and within global cities. Scholars of urbanism and architecture today acknowledge that cities are more than concrete and steel infrastructure. The year-long thesis required projects that critically engage with the historical fabric of the city to imagine new ways of inhabiting it, the creation of new and unexpected forms of community, economy, and typologies within the city, new ways of representing the uneven geography of the city, the "thickening" of the countryside, and provincializing capital. Each student was asked to re-examine their tools and develop strategies to link attributes previously understood to be either separate from each other or external to the design disciplines. The thesis required each to develop new questions as to the range of technical, formal, and social operations for architecture and the built environment.
