Cities and Urban Inequalities (Level 7)

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: Professor Paul Watt
• Assessment: two 3000-word essays (excluding bibliography) (50% each)
  

This module will give you a critical understanding of the various ways that the city is theorised, imagined, represented and experienced. The thematic focus will be on how and why urban inequalities occur both socially (e.g. class, poverty, race and gender) and spatially (e.g. racial segregation, urban marginality and gentrification) in contemporary cities. Examples will be drawn primarily from European and North American cities, although reference will also be made to cities in the Global South. Policy issues in relation to urban regeneration will be a major theme in the module.

Indicative module content

• Urban regeneration and the Olympic Games
• Urban regeneration and housing
• Global cities
• Comparative urban marginality
• Gentrification
• Racial segregation and the multi-ethnic city
• Young people and public space
• Urban activism
• Suburbanisation and suburbia

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• understand how the city can be theorised and represented
• understand how and why urban inequalities occur
• understand urban regeneration policies and practices
• evaluate different forms of evidence in order to produce an extended social science argument
• demonstrate a degree of independent learning.