杏吧论坛

Dr Austin Zeiderman

This course is available on the MSc in Human Geography and Urban Studies (Research), MSc in Regional And Urban Planning Studies, MSc in Urban Policy (杏吧论坛 and Sciences Po) and MSc in Urbanisation and Development. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course is strictly capped at 30. Students are required to apply through Graduate Course Choice on 杏吧论坛 for You by providing a short written statement of why they are interested in taking the course (this includes students on Geography and Environment MSc programmes). If the course is over-subscribed, places will be allocated at the Department’s discretion and a waiting list may be created. Priority will be given to students on the MSc programmes listed above. For further details, please contact your relevant Programme Coordinator.

This course assumes that students already have a background in the social sciences and/or humanities as well as in urban studies. Exceptions will be made for students who can show that they are suitably qualified.

By now we are accustomed to hearing that, for the first time in history, the majority of the world’s population lives in cities. We may also be aware that more than one billion people now live in the urban slums and shantytowns of the global South, and that this is where the majority of world population growth will take place. But what sort of futures are being imagined for the cities of the twenty-first century? In response to this question, GY449 Urban Futures will critically analyze how the future of cities, and the cities of the future, have been thought about and acted upon in different times and places. Students will learn to adopt a geographical and historical approach to urban futures by exploring how ways of envisioning the future of cities differ across time and space. Treating the future as a social, cultural, and political reality with a profound influence on the present, the course will examine how urban areas are planned, built, governed, and inhabited in anticipation of the city yet to come. Each week will be organised around a particular model for the future of the city: the ideal city, the dystopian city, the modernist city, the colonial city, the capitalist city, the socialist city, the organic city, the global city, and the secure city. These models will be examined through concrete examples and will enable the discussion of broader theoretical perspectives in urban studies, wi