Contemporary theories in urban studies

obligatory courses

Classroom

Skrócony opis przedmiotu What is the salience of shifting the epicentre of world urbanization from the West to the cities of the Global South? Do we live on a planet of slums, as M. Davis claims, or maybe in one big suburb, as R. Keil believes? Why did the 2008 crisis start with a real estate crash? The lecture will be a "tour" of the most important contemporary megacities, from Los Angeles and New York City, through Bogota, Sao Paulo, Lagos, Kishasa, Warsaw, Tallinn, Tehran, Beijing, Jakarta and Tokyo. Each of them reveals one of the many aspects of the phenomenon of planetary urbanization, analyzed by such researchers as M. Davis, J. Hoston, D. Harvey, F. De Boeck, Maliq Simone, N. Brenner, R. Keil, or R. Koolhaas.

Pełny opis przedmiotu In 1950 there were only two mega cities in the world: New York and Tokyo. Today we have a few dozen of them and it is them: from Mexico to Lagos, Karachi to Beijing, set the horizon for what is becoming a city and urbanity in the 21st century. The theory in urban studies has been strongly circumstantial for most of the twentieth century: it is on the basis of Western cities that general regularities were created. What if we look at the process of urbanization not through the prism of New York or Paris at all, but through Bogota, Kinshasa or Jakarta? What kind of city theory emerges when we reject the occasional glasses?

This course will allow students to learn about the basic characteristics of the phenomenon called "planetary urbanization". The city and the urbanity as we knew it are undergoing a fundamental redefinition today. We are intellectually helpless in the face of this transformation, since the entire conceptual apparatus at our disposal was created on the basis of Western historical experience. Therefore, the starting point for these classes will be the spatial processes currently taking place in (mega)-cities of every (almost) continent. We will wonder how radical is the current revaluation. Is there really, as some claim, a fundamental transformation of almost every sphere of human activity taking place before our eyes?

It is the megacities that constitute a kind of "laboratory" where new theories and concepts used by contemporary urban researchers and researchers are generated. As part of the exercises for this lecture, students will be able to get to know them in more detail and discuss them. The aim of the lecture is to outline the context in which these theories were born. We will assess whether Rem Koolhaas' research project in Lagos - the first serious attempt to forge a theory based on the non-Western experience of urbanization - was a failure or a success worth following. We will be looking for what David Harvey's followers might call the "spatial cohesion of the city". (structured urban coherence). What methods should be used to study agglomerations with 40 million inhabitants? Are we doomed only to describe fragments or can we be tempted to try a synthesis? Theories and research discussed during the lecture will show how to look for the key to understanding the uniqueness of individual places - even if they are multi-millionaire and ever-changing megacities - and modern, planetary urbanization.

A. Bayat, 1998. Street Politics: Poor People's Movements in Iran, New York: Columbia UP.

F. de Boeck, 2004. Kinshasa: Tales of the Invisible City, Leuven: Leuven UP.

T. Campanella, 2008. The Concrete Dragon. China’s Urban Revolution and What is Means for the World, New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

J. Ryan-Collins et. al, 2017. Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing, London: Zed Books.

M. Davis, 2000. Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US City, Londyn: Verso.

M. Desmond, 2016. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, New York: Allen Lane,

R. Koolhaas, et al., Mutations, 2000. Barcelona: Actar.

Ch. Parenti, 2011. Tropic of Chaos. Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, New York: Nation Books.

K. Phillips-Fein, 2017. Fear City. New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics, New York: Metropolitan Books.

A. Ptak, red., 2018. Amplifying Nature: The Planetary Imagination of Architecture in the Anthropocene, Warszawa: Zachęta.

J. Robinson, 2002. “Global and world cities: a view from off the map”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 26, pp. 531-554.

M. Simone, 2009. City Life from Jakarta to Dakar: Movements at the Crossroads, Londyn: Routledge.

B. Stone, 2014. City and the Coming Climate, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014.

E. Weizman, 2012. Hollow Land. Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, London: Verso.

The final grade will consist of class attendance (20%) and a review essay (80%).