Urban Studies

The course introduces the foundational and holistic knowledge and understanding of urbanism―the study of relationships between people in urban areas with the built environment. It provides a comprehensive inquiry of urban history, key theories, topics, design principles and practices related to urban design, urban planning and landscape design. The emphasis is on developing critical and analytical skills of reading, documenting, analyzing and synthesizing complex information regarding contemporary urban issues and conditions. 

This course examines frontiers of urban environmental sciences and technologies. Course materials comprise scientific literature on urban climate, air pollution, urban acoustics, resilience and energy systems. Students are also exposed to prevailing simulation and data analytics and gain awareness of their application in environmental-conscious design at city scale. 

This course examines the intersection of Asia and urbanization through the lens of development, broadly defined. It covers pollution, housing, labor, gender, mobility, and education. 

This interdisciplinary course examines the socioeconomic and political disenfranchisement experienced by residents of the "other France"—a France comprised of working-class citizens often of immigrant origin and from France’s former colonies. It introduces students to urban sociology by requiring that they focus on the particular problems experienced by social actors who live in economically and socially disfavored parts of Paris. Topics covered include urban sociological theories, de-facto segregation, poverty, crime, schooling, public policy, national identity, the negotiation of bi-culturality, and the French secularizing mission. Students investigate these topics from a variety of sources, ranging from documentary film and photojournalism to literary and cinematic expressions. Via these sources, students become familiar with a vibrant urban "vernacular" culture that contests issues pertaining to citizenship, racialization, and representation.

This course examines e city of Melbourne, exploring the natural, cultural and constructed development of this thriving city. A range of disciplinary perspectives will provide students with an awareness of how this city, and the university within it, have evolved to the present day, and what plans there are to sustain them both into the future

Towards the end of postmodernism, and at the dawn of the "internet age," thinkers such as Michel de Certeau and Marc Augé developed a conceptual model to describe the rather vague feeling of arbitrariness and interchangeability of space they experienced in modern cities, the idea that the few remaining identifiable "places" in our contemporary urban environments were mere remnants of earlier, culturally inscribed sites, re-manufactured for commercial (touristic) purposes. The vast remaining areas of the city were "non-places" and urban "filaments" that did not provide a sense of belonging. This freed city dwellers to (artistically or otherwise) misappropriate or re-inscribe objects of the urban fabric. In the early 1990s, the term hypermodernism (or supermodernism) was introduced to provide a framework for these observations in fields ranging from philosophy to anthropology and architecture. We will consider this concept and its more recent iterations with respect to new and planned buildings in Berlin (by international firms such as OMA and Herzog & de Meuron), to places of infrastructure (train stations, airports), shopping centers, so-called POPS (privately owned public spaces) and urban wilderness areas. Course participants will be encouraged to explore the city on their own and "respond" to particular sites through visuals, audio recordings, (creative) texts and other forms of artistic expression

This course discusses the various creative fields in which Barcelona has been a pioneer. Topics include: urban design, art, culture, design and fashion, theater, dance, music.

This course examines ecological processes, urban resilience and growth in an urban context. It explores how urban planning systems can work in sympathy with, or in contradiction to, such processes, and the implications of this for urban planning practice.

This course provides a theoretical overview of the key historical developments and on-going contemporary debates in Norwegian architecture and design. The interplay between architecture, city planning and design, and the specific Norwegian cultural, economic, and political environment in which they are practiced as applied design disciplines, is a central focus for exploration and discussion in the course. Norway’s role within overlapping Scandinavian, European, and increasingly global, contexts is also explored through the study of key international developments and the impact of these upon Norwegian architectural, city planning, and design discourse. The City of Oslo especially (considered in terms of its key historic and contemporary buildings, cultural institutions, public space and contrasting urban environments) is actively used as a "living classroom" for exploration of these issues and the wider questions that the issues subsequently raise. 

This course provides an introduction to smart city planning. It covers the history and concept of smart cities, future city trends, diverse smart technologies, and smart city policies. Topics include a comparison of European smart cities, technology and urban planning, smart city projects in economic development planning, smart mobility solutions, autonomous vehicles, smart mobility projects in Korea, smart energy transitions, and smart city projects in participatory planning.