Urban Studies

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. 

This course investigates the institutional, legal, political, and economic aspects of the global city. It explores how a truly multinational but local-based political community could rise where, in a circular way, native roots, universalism, cultural diversity, and international links can coexist and support each other. It considers how cities have been the standpoint from which scholars investigate macro-phenomena and issues affecting society as a whole, and discusses how any change affecting the delicate urban ecosystem will therefore also have wider repercussions on how global governance itself is conceived.

This course complicates our understanding of North American cities.  It takes us through the histories and geographies of the emergence of the first North American cities.  Both Canada and the US are examples of settler colonialism – where European settlers evicted through violence those on whose land the two nation’s cities were built.  And the labor of slaves from inside and outside of Canada and the US was used to build these cities. The  course builds upon critical understandings of the two nations and their cities. It examines the changing ways in which North American cities have been governed and their changing position in American and Canadian societies, particularly with the emergence of suburbanization from the late 1940s and the gentrification-driven-renaissance of some of their downtown from the late 1980s. 

This course seeks to make students familiar with the main controversies that are present in urban sociology with particular attention to Brazilian cities. Topics covered include: origins of modern western cities; industrial cities, large cities and metropolises; the Chicago School; Marxism and cities; welfare cities and urban planning; cities and disorganized capitalism; urban dimensions; social movements; the concept of global city; rebellion and change.

This course examines how cities pursue sustainability through governance, planning, and citizen participation. Students explore how environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability intersect within urban policy and daily life, connecting global frameworks—such as the UN 2030 Agenda and the European Green Deal—to local experimentation and community-driven innovation. While Florence provides a unique laboratory for studying how a historic city responds to contemporary challenges (climate adaptation, mobility transformation, housing pressures, and social inclusion) students are encouraged to compare it with other urban contexts across Europe and beyond. This comparative perspective fosters cross-fertilization among diverse models of governance and participation, allowing students to grasp how cities function as complex adaptive systems—dynamic environments where multiple actors, ideas, and scales interact to shape sustainable urban futures. USF combines analytical seminars, field explorations, and participatory exercises. Through simulations, role play games and collaborative projects, students experience the dynamics of real-world decision-making and democratic governance in sustainability planning.