Understanding the City

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: to be confirmed
• Assessment: a 2000-word essay (40%) and 4000-word essay (60%)

Urbanisation now impacts on the way of life of more than half the population of the planet, crucially influencing everyday social interactions, economies and livelihoods, governance and politics, environmental sustainability, globalisation and cultural change. To comprehend such a range of influences, this interdisciplinary module will provide you with foundational theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding cities and urban processes.

Using a range of examples, from the global south to the global north, tracing their rise and fall from ancient to contemporary forms, the module will focus on how cities are made and unmade, the everyday experience of living in them, and how they are represented. As your understanding of the city progresses you will also develop key study and research skills as well as recognise how the city can be used as a way of analysing other social phenomena, such as gender or inequality.

Indicative module syllabus

• Introduction: What is the city? Why are cities important?
• Making Cities:
• The History of the City: the genealogy of urban forms; archaeology, medieval history
• The Political Economy of Cities: Marxist theory, inequality, gentrification
• Urban Planning and Morphology: formal and spatial qualities of cities
• Living Cities:
• Places in the City: neighbourhoods, living spaces and the encounters in-between; representational and symbolic spaces
• Sensing and Imagining the City: everyday experience, affect and the senses, spirituality and religion, forming communities
• Mobilities and Flows Through the City: from transport infrastructure to migration
• Representing Cities:
• City Under Attack: anti-urbanism, utopia and dystopia
• Mapping: different approaches, GIS, critical cartography
• Mediating Cities: technology; surveillance; urban images in literature, film and visual cultures; branding; critical linguistic analysis of media discourse about cities and neighbourhoods

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

• apply different theoretical approaches to understanding the city
• understand and integrate different methodologies and methods used in urban research
• demonstrate knowledge of key debates in a range of disciplines in urban studies
• demonstrate knowledge of cities and urban forms across time and space
• demonstrate knowledge of how cities are lived, represented, made and re-made
• indicate how the city can be used to understand other cultural and social processes such as gender and inequality.