Richard Sennett "The Open City" 

Richard Sennett is a professor of sociology at New York University and the London School of Economics. Beginning in The Uses of Disorder (1970), and in subsequent books such as The Fall of Public Man (1977) and Authority (1980), he has used combined methods of ethnography, history, and social theory to examine the working class, the public realm, and the formation of identity in society. Turning to urban design and physical experience, he addressed the personal scale in The Corrosion of Character (1998), The Culture of New Capitalism (2006), The Craftsman (2008), and Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation (2012). This talk, on the theme of his next book, will describe open and closed systems in urban design and explore ways of practicing open design.