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.