Democracy and Urban Life

Recommended Prerequisites

Basic instruments of sociological thought.

Teaching Methods

Students are expected to attend classes regularly (minimum of 75% of class attendance). Besides students are supposed to take part in group-discussions and to complete an individual essay (3,000 to 5,000 words).. Along the way students, individually or collectively (two persons maximum), are asked to help lead two course discussions, and to make a couple of short oral presentation of readings assigned. Written short syntheses (400-800 words) of these presentations are to be handed over in time to accompany the presentations.

Learning Outcomes

The study unit helps educate students on issues, problems and public policy questions related to unban life.
There are 5 major study purposes:
(i) to introduce students to major historical, political, economic and social dimensions of the urban phenomenon
(ii) to offer a broad view on the impact of democratic policies and processes in the quality of city governance
(iii) to provide methodological tools to analyze urban policies and their social impacts
(iv) to bring a broad understanding of current concepts of urban studie
(v) to lead students to the major critical issues relating democratic city life.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

- The urbanization of the world: Accelerating the pace of change;

- Concepts and theories of the modern city: Cityness and city making;

- The Western urban canon and its critics: From Simmel to the Chicago School; from H. Lefebvre to S. Zukin; from D. Harvey to S. Sassen; 

- Global cities and Invisible cities: Democracy in “other” cities;

- The city and the senses: Living the city, re-capturing the sensible;

- Urban policies: The re-making of urban democracy or the re-birth of “the right to the city”;

- Urban spaces/Rebel cities: The sociopolitical meaning of streets and the plazas. From Ground Zero to Tarhir.

- Urban warfare and the multicultural urban world: Learning from Syria

- The triumph of the city versus the ghostly city: Detroitism and the decay of city centers

- The open city: Democracy, cosmopolis and the future urban world.

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Other: 10.0%
Report of a seminar or field trip: 30.0%
Synthesis work: 60.0%

Bibliography

Bloom, C (2012), Riot City: Protest and rebellion in the capital. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan

Brenner, N & Theodore, N (2002), Spaces of Neoliberalism. Oxford, Blackwell

Burdett R. & Sudjic, D.(eds.), The Endless City. London, Phaidon

De Cauter, L. (2004) The capsular civilization. Rotterdam, NAI Publishers

Degen, M (2008), Sensing Cities. London/N. York, Routledge

Fortuna, C (2012), “In praise of other views”, Iberoamericana, 45

Graham, S., Cities under siege. London/N. York, Verso

Harvey, D (2012), Rebel Cities. London/N. York, Verso

Landry, Ch., The Art of City Making. London, Earthscan

Pinder, D (2002), “In defense of utopian urbanism”, Geografiska Annaler, 84

Sassen, S (2006), Territory, Authority, Rights. Princeton Univ Press

Seabrook J (2007), Cities. London, Pluto Press

Short, J. R. Urban Theory: A critical assessment. London Palgrave

Tonkiss, F (2005), Space, the city and social theory. Cambridge, Polity Press

Zukin, Sh (2010), Naked City. Oxford, Oxford Univ Press.