IDC291_2014-2

Urban Development

Prof. Cuz Potter
Graduate School of International Studies
Korea University
Fall 2014
 

Course Number:IDC291

Lecture:Wednesdays 2:00–4:45pm

Location:115 International Studies Hall

 

1 Introduction

Cities are key nodes of economic production, governance, cultural production, consumption, and social movements. This semester we will explore several approaches to understanding how cities function both as local centers and as nodes in global networks. In particular, we will examine ways in which spatial strategies can be employed by governments and economic actors to manage urban populations and ways in which grassroots social movements can also employ spatial strategies to further their cause. Of particular interest will be Manuel Castells hypothesis that urban social movements have shifted from struggles over production to struggles over consumption. Topics that will be addressed in this effort include imperialism, spatial segregation, infrastructure, and the nature of citizenship.

 

2 Objectives

By the end of this course, students will be knowledgeable on:

  1. Several frameworks for understanding urban development, including political economy, post-imperialism, large technical systems, and actor-network theory.
  2. A selection of historical and contemporary alternative approaches to urban development.
  3. Ways in which the global economy can be better understood as an urban economy.

 

3 Course Requirements

  • A one-page Reaction Paper (RP) is due electronically by 9am WEDNESDAY morning each week for 8 out of the 12 weeks for which there are readings. This allows you to choose which weeks to write a reflection paper. The papers will not be graded with a letter grade, but will be allocated from zero to five points depending on how actively your paper engages the material. The paper should usually be 350–500 words (about one page single-spaced). These brief papers are intended to facilitate class discussion in seminar. You can use the Reaction Paper (RP) to ask for clarification about any aspect of the readings you did not fully understand and/or to express an opinion about one or more of the readings. In general, I would advise you to focus the RP on only one of the readings assigned for each week. RPs should be clearly written, spell-checked, and grammatically correct.
  • One individual research paper is required. You are free to choose your own topic, but it must be closely related to the material and approved by the professor. These papers must explicitly draw on the assigned readings and class discussions. The paper must be 3500–5000 words long (not including cover pages and bibliographies). Late papers will lose ten points (one letter grade) per day.
  • There will no examinations.

 

4 Grading

Weights 40%Response papers60%Paper

 

5 Plagiarism

Plagiarism is unacceptable. If plagiarism is detected, you will receive a zero for the given assignment. Please note that plagiarism is much broader than many students realize. You are encouraged to look at the excellent descriptions of plagiarism from Indiana University (http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/plagiarism.shtml), Harvard University (http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k70847&pageid=icb.page342054), and the University of Wisconsin (http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/QuotingSources.html), and you will be held to their standards.

 

6 Required texts

The following book is available through 공문화사 and your favorite bookseller.

  • Anthony D. King. Global cities : post-imperialism and the internationalization of London. International library of sociology. Routledge, London ; New York, 1990.

All other materials will be available electronically through the class website and as a reader.

 

7 Schedule of Topics and Reading

Module 1: Cities and development

Week 1 (September 3): Introduction

Week 2 (September 10): No class.

Week 3 (September 17): Cities and capitalism

  1. David Harvey. The Urbanization of Capital: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanization. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Md., 1985, chapters 1 and 2.
  2. Bob Jessop. David Harvey: A Critical Reader, chapter Spatial Fixes, Temporal Fixes, and Spatio-Temporal Fixes, pages 142–166. Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford, 2006. (Recommended only.)

Week 4 (September 24): Uneven development

  1. Neil Smith. Uneven development: nature, capital, and the production of space. Blackwell, New York, NY, 1984, chapters 4 and 5.
  2. Neil Brenner. Leviathan Undone? Towards a Political Economy of Scale, chapter A Thousand Leaves: Notes on the Geographies of Uneven Spatial Development, pages 27–50. University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver, 2009.

Week 5 (October 1): Spatial Keynesianism

  1. Neil Brenner. New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004, chapter 4.

Week 6 (October 8): State rescaling

  1. Neil Brenner. New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004, chapter 5.

  2. Youjeong Oh. Korean television dramas and the political economy of city promotion. International Journal
    of Urban and Regional Research, 2014. (Recommended)

Week 7 (October 15): Planetary urbanism

  1. Henri Lefebvre. The Urban Revolution. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2003, chapter 1.
  2. Edward Soja and Miguel Kanal. The Endless City: The Urban Age Project by the London School of Economics and Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society, chapter The Urbanization of the World, pages 54–69. Phaidon Press, 2010.
  3. Neil Brenner and Christian Schmid. The ‘urban age’ in question. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2013.
  4. Andy Merrifield. The urban question under planetary urbanization. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37(3):909–922, 2012.

Week 8 (October 22—Exam week)

Week 9 (October 29): No class.

Module 2: Global cities and imperialism

Week 10 (November 5): Global cities and imperialism I

  1. King, Part 1.

Week 11 (November 12): Global cities and imperialism II

  1. King, Part 2.

Week 12 (November 19): Global cities and imperialism III

  1. James C. Scott. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1998, Chapters 1–3.

Module 3: Quartering the city

Week 13 (November 26): Quartering (Paper topic due)

  1. Peter Marcuse. The enclave, the citadel, and the ghetto: What has changed in the post-fordist U.S. city. Urban Affairs Review, 33(2):228–264, 1997.
  2. Loic Wacquant. Deadly symbiosis: when ghetto and prison mesh and meet. Punishment and Society, 3(1):95–134, 2001.
  3. Susan E. Chaplin. Cities, sewers and poverty: India’s politics of sanitation. Environment and Urbanization, 11(1):145–158, April 1999.
  4. Seth Schindler. Governing the twenty-first century metropolis and transforming territory. Territory, Politics, Governance, 2014.

Week 14 (December 3): Splintering

  1. Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin. Splintering urbanism : networked infrastructures, technological mobilities and the urban condition. Routledge, London ; New York, 2001, Chapters 5 and 7.

Week 15 (December 10): No class.

Week 16 (December 17): Final exams week. (Paper due by 5pm.)