Undergraduate Module Descriptor

POC3109: Politics in a Global Urban Age

This module descriptor refers to the 2018/9 academic year.

Please note that this module is only delivered on the Penryn Campus.

Module Content

Syllabus Plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics:

 

The Urban and the Political: What’s the Problem?

  • Polis, State, Global Urban: Where in the World is ‘Politics’?
  • Framing the Challenge: Ontology, Epistemology, Methodology?

 

Key Approaches to the Global Urban Transition

  • Global Cities/The Global City
  • Planetary Urbanization
  • Urban Networks and Assemblage Urbanism
  • Cities and Urbanization in the Global South
  • The Politics of Urbanism as a Way of Life

 

Case Studies: Politics and the Urban in Transition

  • Okanagan Valley, Canada
  • Cornwall, UK
  • Student led case study analysis

Learning and Teaching

This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:

Scheduled Learning and Teaching ActivitiesGuided independent studyPlacement / study abroad
221280

...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:

CategoryHours of study timeDescription
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities2211 x 2 hour Seminars Students will be given guided opportunities to provide opening commentary, questions, or interventions for seminar discussions. Students will be expected to engage with their peers and provide constructive feedback on occasion.
Guided Independent Study43Private study – students are expected to read suggested texts and make notes prior to seminar sessions. More specifically, students are expected to devote approximately: 43 hours to weekly readings and seminar preparation
Guided Independent Study10Formative, peer review, and self-assessment activities
Guided independent study50Independent research, reading, and writing
Guided independent study20Practical/creative research project
Guided Independent Study 5Presentation preparation

Online Resources

This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).

City Lab: www.citylab.com

Indicative Reading List

This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.

Basic reading:

 

Amin, Ash. 2013. The Urban Condition:?A Challenge to Social Science. Public Culture 25 (2): 201-208.

Amin, A. and N. Thrift. 2002. Cities: Reimagining the urban. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Boudreau, Julie-Anne. 2017. Global Urban Politics: Informalization of the State. Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press.

Brenner, N. 2013. Theses on urbanization. Public Culture 25 (1): 85-114.

Closs Stephens, A. 2010. Citizenship without community: Time, design and the city. Citizenship Studies. 14 (1): 31-46.

Coward, M. 2009. Urbicide: The Politics of Urban Destruction. New York: Routledge.

Curtis, Simon. 2016. Global Cities and Global Order. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Diouf, Mamadou and Rosalind Fredericks, eds. 2015. The Arts of Citizenship in African Cities: Infrastructures and Spaces of Belonging. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Farías, I. and Bender, T., eds. 2010. Urban assemblages: How actor-network theory changes urban research. New York: Routledge.

Jacobs, Jane. 2012. Urban geographies I: Still thinking cities relationally. Progress in Human Geography 36 (3): 412–422

King, AD. 1990. Urbanism, colonialism and the world-economy: cultural and spatial foundations of the world urban system. London: Routledge.

Lefebvre, Henri. 2003 [1970]. The urban revolution, trans. R. Bononno. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Low, N. 1991. Planning, politics and the state. Abingdon: Unwin Hyman Ltd. Part I: Planning practice and political theory pp 11-51.

Magnusson, W. 2011. Politics of urbanism: Seeing like a city. London: Routledge. (selections TBD)

McLean, Heather. 2017. In praise of chaotic research pathways:?A feminist response to planetary urbanization. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 0(0) 1–9 DOI: 10.1177/0263775817713751

Merrifield, A. 2012. The politics of the encounter and the urbanization of the world. City 16 (3): 269-283.

Peake, Linda. 2016. The Twenty-First Century Quest For Feminism And the Global Urban. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 40 (1): 219–227. DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.12276

Pratt, G. 2017. One hand clapping: Notes towards a methodology for debating planetary urbanization. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 0(0) 1–7 DOI: 10.1177/0263775817716555

Robinson J. 2002. Global and world cities: A view from off the map. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26(3): 531-554

Roy A. 2009. The 21st-century metropolis: New geographies of theory, Regional Studies 43 (6): 819-830. DOI: 10.1080/00343400701809665

Sassen S. 2010. The Global City: Strategic Site, New Frontier. Accumulation by Dispossession: Transformative Cities in the New Global Order ed. Swapna Banerjee-Guha. New Delhi: SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ldt.

Sennett, Richard. 1969. Classic essays on the culture of cities. New York: Appleton Century Crofts.

Wekerle G. 2004. Framing feminist claims for urban citizenship. Mapping Women, Making Politics: Feminist Perspectives on Political Geography ed. LA Staehali, E Kofman, LJ Peake. New York and Oxford: Routledge. 245-259.