URBAN ELSEWHERES: EXPLORING A WORLD OF CITIES

Catalog description

We live in an increasingly urbanized world. But what does it mean to be “urban”? As urbanization reaches more corners of the globe, its forms and processes become increasingly diverse. Urban Elsewheres is dedicated to investigating this diversity and to exploring the implications that unfamiliar urban phenomena might have for how we understand urbanization—both elsewhere in the world and in our own backyards. Through a comparative engagement with case studies drawn from around the world, this course will challenge some of our most deeply held, common sense assumptions about urbanization. Students will be asked to stretch the conceptual limits of urbanization and explore the social and political possibilities of an expanded urbanism. In doing so, the course will engage with the many of the most heated theoretical debates about urbanization, equipping students with a set of comparative analytical tools with which to explore the wider field of urban studies