American urbanization, urban sprawl and city planning policies are some issues to be up for discussion at a lecture Thursday night.

M. Christine Boyer, the William R. Kenan Jr. professor of architecture and urbanism at Princeton University, will speak at the lecture “Urban Operations,” at 7:30 p.m. in the Sun Room of the Memorial Union. The lecture will be the last Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities-sponsored lecture of this academic year.

Boyer has written many articles and books on urbanism and the practicalities of architecture and design, with such titles as “CyberCities: Visual Perception in the Age of Electronic Communication,” “The City of Collective Memory: Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainment” and “Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of American City Planning.”

The term “urban operations,” as speculated by Marwan Ghandour, associate professor of architecture, is a “coupling of two terms that don’t normally go together” – a sort of catchall term that allows the urban arena to be mated to other professions, such as a military operation or a medical operation. It’s this type of overlapping that allows for urban policies and planning to enter other arenas, he said.

“Urbanism is a theoretical term that refers to the shaping of the environment with societies and culture,” Ghandour said. “It’s a sort of blanketing term under which social and cultural aspects [can be applied to design].”

In short, urbanism describes how human society and culture may flourish or perish in a planned-out city structure.

Some of the topics Boyer may cover could include “the development of the American city and the social and political factors [that surround urbanism],” Ghandour said.

Another social condition Boyer has written on is one that stems from the turn of the 20th century housing market boost that came from World War II veterans’ being promised access to home loans. This turned a society on to an “owning-versus-renting” mentality that had its value systems economically changed; therefore, the American dream became transformed into an ownership dream – the dream of owning a car or home. In this situation, city engineers wanted a more stable economy and used the American dream ideal as an “advertising system” to sell homes, Ghandour said.

Other contemporary problems that Boyer might discuss would focus on the effects of the turn of that same century situation, Ghandour said.

“You now see the devoiding of the inner city, with anyone who can leave does and moves into suburbia and into gated communities,” Ghandour said.

Jennifer Ross, graduate student in architecture, plans on attending the lecture because she is interested, and values a female voice in design and architecture.

“I want to be an active student, and from what I know about her, I will be very interested, and am looking forward to a speaker that is a female in the design field,” Ross said.