Urban Studies

This course focuses on the intersection of climate crisis, energy demand, buildings and the wellbeing of people. Students are introduced to key concepts and Open Access data and tools for modelling and analyzing building energy demand and occupant wellbeing at a large scale. Students learn to synthesize knowledge across disciplines to develop and evaluate strategies and comprehensive plans for sustainable urban living.

This course provides an introduction to the sub-discipline of urban geography. It explores the distinctive contribution that geographers have made to the analysis of cities and urban life. The course outlines the economic and social origins of urban life, exploring the relationship between population density, size, and diversity that characterise cities. The course systematically outlines how contemporary cities can be interpreted as economic spaces, social spaces, and political entities. It also explores the different ways that urban geographers and others have framed their research into cities and urban environments. Given that cities – for all their attractions and strengths – are frequently defined by their dysfunction and inequality, the course examines how such poor outcomes are generated. It also explores the kinds of policy programmes that might be capable of generating more liveable and equitable cities. The course takes a selfconsciously international perspective, encouraging participants to read widely about the diversity of cities that form the focus of urban geographical thinking today.

This course focuses on urban capitalism, understood as the link between a mode of production and a mode of relationship to space that are now dominant in the 21st century. On the one hand, space is a support for economic activities: contemporary restructurings of capitalism lead to socio-spatial dynamics (metropolization, gentrification, etc.). On the other hand, capitalism transforms cities through the production of real estate and infrastructure, now connected to the financial markets. Finally, the course questions the socio-spatial inequalities and crises associated with urban capitalism, as well as the resistance to it. At the crossroads of political economy, urban sociology and economic geography, the course familiarizes students with research on this topic through various media (scientific texts, documentaries, fieldwork). 

This course focuses on French cities in the modern era. It explores in greater depth how, in concrete terms, French towns revealed the workings of modern France. Themes such as demography, society, economy, and cultural life, are covered.

This course examines the emergence of cities from the urban revolution around 5,000 BC to 4,000 BC first in Western Asia, through the key milestones of our urban evolution, to the current era of megacities and megaregions. The issues covered in this course include the birth of cities as a part of urban lifecycles; the projection of power; order and governance; disruption and reconfiguration; humanistic cities; building cities for mass populations; conflict, community, and faith; trends and competitions; unprecedented societal changes and urban growth; contemporary urbanism and our planetary future. We will focus on the development of a particular urbanism with its constituent cities as we expound each of these issues, while seeking to bring comparative case studies to illustrate how these issues have been unravelled in similar and diverse ways in other urbanisms and historical periods.

This course begins from the recent developments in city making that have emerged with the aim of creating more convivial places through pluralistic, democratic practices. The course examines the historical, cultural, economic, political, environmental, and other influences that determine how places form and how planners sought to control their development.  This course explores the dynamic and contingent nature of place making practices and theories from four perspectives:

a) The specific activities associated with planning, place-making, and urban governance,

b) the different, often competing perspectives of people who plan, control, manage, and make our cities; 

c) the relationship between state agencies, place-makers & civil society; and,

d) plans, policies and projects as historical artifacts.

The city and language course introduces students to French history, culture, and language through team-taught instruction. In the “City as Public Forum” sessions, students are introduced to French history and culture through a series of lectures and site visits. Students discover some of the fascinating ways the core principles of social justice were tested in theory and practice on the streets of Paris in the past and explore how they evolved into the pillars of French society today. The course focuses on just how an ideal society should be forged, where all are free individuals and members of a cohesive community at the same time. Trying to make individuals believe—as religions do—in the primacy of the collective, and in its concomitant goal of protecting human rights, is at the core of social justice in France. From 52 B.C.E to today, France has been an exemplar of how—and how not—to construct a just society. To render these values visible, and therefore legible, to all by adding a physical dimension—whether constructive or destructive—to the usual means of establishing laws or setting policies, is what distinguishes the history of France's capital city of Paris. Those who control Paris—be they monarchs, revolutionaries, or presidents, past and present—believe that erecting all kinds of physical structures will render their values concrete and immutable. The ideal French society did not always necessarily mean a democratic or inclusive one. Since the French Revolution, however, institutionalizing the concept of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” has been France's greatest universal achievement and a source of constant upheaval, eliciting a unique form of secular activism that has led to targeting buildings and monuments that no longer reflect the collective's values. Students discuss how the diverse social actors, who constitute “the French,” continue to thrust their bodies and minds into the physical spaces of the public sphere in the pursuit of social justice. In the “Unlocking French” sessions, students learn targeted language skills through situational communication, so they have the opportunity to use everything they learn as they go about their daily activities.

This course examines the vast world of visualizing the city and ways of representing the built environment, including how to both interpret and use visualizations to read the city.