Urban Studies

This course surveys the growing subfield of urban political ecology. In particular, it focuses on the material and social flows of ‘stuff’ that circulate to, through, and beyond the city. Water, sewage, electricity, garbage, plastic, carbon, and much more are all pumped, diverted, quarantined, cleansed, financed, regulated, produced, and consumed via cities. This ‘metabolism’ of material things produces varying qualities and outcomes of urban life. These flows and their outcomes are the course’s central focus, framing as urban metabolism the complex, uneven, and surprising journeys, infrastructures, transformations, politics, histories, labor, and expertise required for these flows. Drawing on a diverse set of academic, journalistic, video, textual, and audio course material, the course traces the pathways of material things through cities and their hinterlands worldwide, unpacking how their flows are constructed and regulated, financed, and managed, and contested and politicized.

This innovative course introduces students to important and emerging issues in urban cultures and societies in the opening decades of the 21st century. At its core, it explores the interaction between culture, space, and people.  To do so, the course explores developments in three important global cities: Seoul, Shanghai, and Edinburgh. Students engage with both textual and non-textual materials, including films, TV shows, music, webtoons, and design. Although the course is built round the cases of Seoul, Shanghai, and Edinburgh students learn how to situate the cases in a broader comparative perspective, within Asia and in Europe. This course draws on conceptual and analytical tools from the humanities and social sciences. The course introduces students to key concepts in urban studies. Next, it familiarizes them with a select number of contemporary developments in Seoul, Shanghai, and Edinburgh. The later part of the course is more practice-oriented, as students carry out a small research project in the city of Edinburgh, before reflecting on the possible links with the other cities.

This course focuses on understanding the relationship between terrorism and urban space. It traces the impact of terrorist attacks on cities and urban, cultural, political, religious, public, and economic areas in the strategies of terrorist organizations. The course discusses the method of terrorism to manipulate and change urban spaces and the counter-terrorism strategies and policies aimed at rehabilitating the damage. Three cities will be the primary examples in this course, among others: New York, Paris, and Mosul. The course provides an introduction to global digital governance and highlights the importance of understanding how internet technology functions, is evolving, and being governed. It examines how the digitization of the world is impacting our societies and economies, and what rules this trend may imply.

This course explores the changing roles of cities in an age of globalization. The first part examines cities as part of urban networks at the national, regional and international levels, and focuses on the implications arising from the rise of mega-cities and global cities. The second half investigates the challenges facing cities on the ground, including issues of the revitalization and re-imaging of city cores, changing retail landscapes, and the impact of telecommunications on the location of urban activities and peoples' mobility.

This course examines the idea that the contemporary production of urban space restricts the rights of many urban dwellers to inhabit, develop, and otherwise shape the cities in which they live and work. Drawing especially on the work of David Harvey and Henri Lefebvre (alongside other "metromarxists") the course contrasts the way that cities serve the interests of financial powers, developers, and property owners with the forms of urban exclusion, alienation, and marginalization experienced by those who are oppressed by virtue of their class, ethnicity, sexuality, age, or gender. Though consideration of different struggles for urban space, the course explores important questions about how people should make claims to urban space, and explores the political potential of the demand for "the right to the city."