Urban planet

This class provides a high-intensity introduction to the history and theory of global urbanisation. Drawing from an interdisciplinary literature ranging from planning and urban theory, and history, and the urban social sciences, the course explores the emergence, development and continual transformation of cities in relation to changing configurations of urbanisation and myriad socio-spatial struggles, in a chronological manner, accompanied by cases from around the globe.
The course has a socio-historical approach that applies the STEEP framework to identify the historic and emerging Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental and Political drivers that transform cities. Departing from the key drivers of change embodied in the STEEP framework, this course elaborates on:

• The development logic and path dependencies between systemic changes of urban society, economy and the city itself.
• The historic and new urban agendas, planning discourses, strategies and practices.

Next to identifying the STEEP drivers of urbanisation, the course analyses a translation of STEEP framework to the planning domain, by focusing on 5 chosen STEEP themes in its tutorial part. These themes are housing, transport, economy, park and natural environment, and public amenities.

Lecture themes include:

Urbanisation in North America

• An European urbanism in America
• The Park movement and the rise of the an American urbanism
• The City Beautiful movement
• Early regional planning and the heydays of American urbanism
• Late regional planning
• Neo-liberal planning ideologies and the reinvention of American urbanism

Urbanisation in the Global South

• Shaping the "developing world”
• The birth of urban planning
• Utopian planning
• Regional planning
• Planning for sustainable development, globalization and planning
• Neo-liberal planning

Assignments

As this is a theory and analytical course, one essay (individual) and the final academic paper (done in pairs) are important requirements for completing the course. The essay challenges the student to critically engage with key issues raised in one or more of the lectures and the assigned readings. The academic paper is an opportunity to reflect and work on various challenges of urbanisation in a Global South case study.

The course will introduce students to the vast intellectual terrain of global urbanisation, and urban planning responses to it, while highlighting the social, technological, economic, environmental and political (STEEP) drivers and impacts and showing similarities and differences between processes/results in different geographies. By the end of the course, the students will be able to:

• Critically think and discuss about the interrelated nature of urbanisation and STEEP drivers;
• Critically analyze the urban planning responses to STEEP drivers and their impact on STEEP domains;
• Reflect on the global dimensions of urbanisation and urban planning paradigms, their similarities, potentials, and challenges.

The above aims are achieved predominantly by tutorials, accompanied by readings and lectures. The emphasis on tutorials stems from our student-centred didactic approach, which encourages the students to master the subject by self-study, practice and application of critical thinking.