Urban Studies

This course covers theories and processes of contemporary urban development from a critical political economy perspective, addressing urban problems and policy responses in our rapidly urbanizing world. The course examines what urbanization means to the state, to (global/domestic) businesses, and ordinary citizens, focusing on a selected set of key themes that are pertinent to the understanding of urban injustice. Such themes may include, but are not limited to, the understanding of the (social) production of unequal urban space, global circulations of urbanism, gentrification, displacement, and dispossession. Case studies are largely drawn from a diverse range of cities across the world, providing opportunities for students to contest urban theories that have largely been rooted in the experiences of the advanced economies.

In this course we will explore the relationships between people, nature and space as well as the production and use of open space (e.g., changing interpretation and usage patterns in relation to the city and open space or the change in living, work and leisure) against the background of social development. Particular emphasis is placed on gender as an analytical category for spatial concepts and spatial actions as well the consideration of the interaction between theory and practice. That also includes current trends in spatial development.
 

This course explores the making of a modern metropolis: London in the 20th century. Using the city as a classroom, students take a social and cultural approach to London’s history. The course attends to differences in the urban space, thinking about the dividing line of the Thames that separates the city North and South, or the East/West divide. They consider the multiplicity of lives lived in London, as shaped by structures including gender, class, race, and age. Students study some of the major events of this period including suffrage campaigns, two world wars, mass migration, and decolonization. They also think about how the public history of the city has been constructed through museums, walking tours, podcasts, documentaries, fiction, and film.

In 1000 BCE, the Mediterranean and Near East were barely urbanized; in the centuries that followed, a dense network of interconnected cities spanning the region developed. This course explores this transformation by examining changing physical as well as social relations between people, as well as between people and their environments. Students study the rise and fall of the ancient city, including its ecology and domestic politics, and modern debates over ancient urbanism. What existed before cities? Why do cities appear and why do they decline? How do cities relate to the natural world? Is urbanism necessarily linked to inequality? How do cities change when they are integrated into imperial systems? Students explore these questions through a variety of case studies, from tiny trading outposts to megacities like Rome and Alexandria, and a range of types of evidence, such as written histories, inscribed law codes, and the physical remains of the cities themselves.

This course is designed to study and review the global efforts to pursue sustainable development. Such efforts have developed the concrete three pillars (Poverty Reduction/Environmental Sustainability/Social Protection) of sustainable development. Especially, the United Nations (UN) has led to establish sustainable development knowledge and capacity for policy-makers, bilateral and multilateral agencies and civil society with local partners in developing countries. The course explores the basic concept of environmental issues and problems and principles of environmental policies that contribute to achieving the sustainable development goals. It is critical to understand the real environmental issues that are complex and challenging to tackle, finding practical solutions. Students will be participating in the discussion and debate on the sustainable development and its environmental components. Special focus is on the issue for developing countries, whose challenge is to harmonize the economic development and environmental conservation. Specific issues on climate change and sustainable development will be covered in depth.

The course focuses on cultural and artistic interventions in urban spaces and how they actively re-think and reconfigure the city. It investigates how cities can be used as platforms where new notions of citizenship, community, and the public sphere are being performed. Using concepts and theories from performance studies, urban studies, and public sphere theory, the course discusses how power relations are performed in cities daily, and how these can be critically revealed and (temporarily) disturbed through artistic interventions in public space. Next to discussing a variety of specific cases of public space intervention in class, students design and execute a small-scale intervention in public space with a small group., work on a series of assignments, and write a paper on a particular strategy of intervention. 

The course begins with exploring the concept of the "urban" in urban studies literature by examining what urbanization means to the governments, businesses, and people whose lives are affected by changes to the built environment of cities and to the ecosystems that support them. It moves on to consider urban contestations over policy, planning, and development among a wide range of stakeholders, from real estate developers to social movements to international NGOs. This interactive course draws on examples of urban policy and planning practices from both the global North and the South, with emphasis on Asia, Latin America, and the North Atlantic. It also includes a field visit to central London.

More than half of the world's population today live in urban areas, and this share is expected to increase. Modern cities are highly complex political and economic systems. But with the complexity also comes the challenge of how to organize them well. This course applies concepts and theories across philosophy, politics, and economics to the challenges of urban living. The course is divided into two parts. The first part will introduce students to the key theoretical debates relevant to the socio-political organization of the city. Students investigate whether living in the city is qualitatively different to living elsewhere. During the second part of the course, students apply this theoretical knowledge to concrete problems and case studies: urban informality, sanctuary cities, housing, residential segregation and proposals for urban independence.  

The key goal of this course is to appreciate different "modes" and "lenses" of urban thinking and their relationship with urban policy practice, and to understand how to source and interpret different types of urban expertise in relation to complex urban challenges.  Whilst cities have in the past years been an exciting locus of experimentation, and the promises of the "smart city" agenda as well as a city gender lens have fast risen to wide popularity in urban research and policy, there remain many areas in which complex urban challenges test our contemporary understanding of the "urban age." The course engages with urban change-makers working across academic research (in UCL and beyond) and public and private sector institutions. 

This course explores the changing relationships between health, lifestyles, and the city in both historical and contemporary contexts across the Global North and South. Focusing on a wide range of case studies, the course will critically examine the emergence of the idea of "lifestyle" as an explicit public health concern and, in addition, an object of geographic analysis. The creation of lifestyle as a problem to be addressed comes as part of a wider acknowledgement of the capacity of certain features of urban landscapes to perpetuate the risk of certain "lifestyle" conditions such as obesity that result from an amalgam of factors including sedentary behavior and poor diets, perpetuated by the risks presented by the places in which people live, work, travel, and play.