Geography

Melbourne is often described as one of the ‘world’s most liveable cities’. What makes Melbourne such a vibrant city and how did it get there? Did you know that the siting of the Melbourne central business district is actually related to ancient volcanic eruptions? The geology and natural environment around Melbourne provided the Indigenous clans of the eastern Kulin nation access to fresh water and proximity to the coastal and wetland resources that were central to their annual cycle of movements around their ancestral homeland for at least 30,000 years. These resources also made the area an ideal “Site for a Village” by European settlers who ‘founded’ the city in 1835. Since that time, Melbourne has undergone profound changes in its population, prosperity, cultural diversity, infrastructure and natural resources. Establishment of the city had a devastating impact on the Indigenous inhabitants and also became almost unliveable during periods of its history. What is happening now, or is being planned, to recognize this history and ensure the sustainability of our city into the future? This course takes you on a journey across the city of Melbourne in space and time, exploring the natural, cultural and constructed development of this thriving city. A range of disciplinary perspectives provide you with an awareness of how this city, and our University within it, have evolved to the present day, and what plans there are to sustain them both into the future.

This course discusses the connection between populations and their environment. It studies human geography in relation to global populations, with an emphasis on the populations' divisions over space and their systems of habitation. This includes demographic dynamics, movement, disparities and socio-spatial segregations, relations of populations to their living space, and territorial systems.

Cities around the world are confronted with major problems concerning economic development, sustainability, social inclusion, safety and transport. This course does not focus exclusively on local governments but studies the city – i.e. the variety of private businesses, NGOs, citizens, stakeholders etc. – as a problem solving system. Using a combination of insights from public administration, political science, and urban studies, students discuss five perspectives on urban governance reflecting different ways to deal with the challenges that cities are facing: the managerial city, corporatist governance, pro-growth governance, welfare governance, and smart governance (including the role of ICT and network governance). The perspectives are used to analyze the variety of urban governance practices both in the Netherlands and around the world: the course has both a local and a global focus. The course introduces students to urban governance in Utrecht and other cities in the Netherlands, but also other European countries, the US, India, and China. International students are invited to present material concerning cities in their own countries to enrich learning about urban governance in this course. This course uses different formats, including lectures about the literature and brief presentations by the students in which they relate the literature to empirical examples in cities. Guest lectures go deeper into the practical aspects of urban governance in different contexts. In concluding presentations, students present an analysis of urban governance in two comparable cities. The idea of these presentations is that contrasting cities helps to study mechanisms of urban governance and assess the merits and drawbacks of different approaches.

A lecture-based course designed to provide a basic understanding of the nature and operation of earth-surface systems in general, based on hydrological, geomorphological and atmospheric examples.

This course encourages students to describe, analyze, and reflect upon the broader implications of life in cities from historical and contemporary perspectives while looking ahead to a range of possible urban futures. The course is structured around three distinctive modes: networked people, networked cities, and global networks that approximate to different network scales at which urban questions can be approached.

This course examines island and ocean geographies in postcolonial contexts, such as climate change, forced migration, militarization, biodiversity, and the blue economy. Geographic theories, including material geographies, political geographies, more-than-human geographies, and feminist geographies are explored. Topics include geographic concepts of region, scale, scarcity, boundaries, marginality, and identity. Case studies are drawn from the wider Pacific region, including New Zealand.

This course examines the intersection of urban geography and the geography of globalization to understand key references in academic debates, and their relevance for real-world social, economic, and political issues in our cities today. The course offers a critical, human-geographical perspective on "global cities," how these manifest in different parts of the world, how they matter for distinct realms of urban life, and how we can study features of global urban geography. Themes include empires, development, and cities; "global cities"; "Third World cities" or "cities of the global South"; urban spaces of neo-liberalism; new geographies of urban theory; and planetary urbanization. Students examine cases related to migration, sexual minorities, the circulation of ideas, and gentrification. Examples come from both the "global North" and the "global South" to help students understand when and how these categories may be useful.

This course covers adaptation of relief modeling processes to bioclimatic conditions: morphogenetic systems and morphoclimatic domains.

Using an approach over several disciplines, such as meta-geography, geopolitics, geohistory, cartography (ancient and contemporary) and the epistemology of geography (including the history of the discipline), this class looks at the divisions of the world. This class addresses topics such as: the measure of time and space while considering region, scale, and temporality; the geohistorical dispersion of the human genus on Earth and corresponding representation (Brandt, Hungington, Saïd); limits and conventions of continents; invented continents (Lemutian, Atlantis); rotundity and stature of the earth, looking at projections and the prime meridian, epistemic changes, quantifications and visualization; the "cosmographic revolution", definition, delimitation and cartography of the sea; the modern mapping device; and the invention of the Far East and the Middle East.