This module will look – across geographies and types of cities – at mechanisms and in-struments of formal urban planning, urban management and urban governance in cities and communities and, if necessary, in an international context. It will also look at what might be called ‘constructive contestations’ of this: the urban politics and subaltern urban-isms of communities excluded from or at the margins of the formally planned city.
We will start with the latter. In the first part of the course, we will explore social change and urban change processes, and consider the everyday urbanisms at the edges of the planned city. We will explore urban change that contests and counters the planned city and turn to counter-imaginaries of the city, the urban settlers imagining them, and the ways these im-aginaries are both rooted in and shaping cities. Crucially, we will understand such subaltern urbanisms as forms of prefigurative politics and ‘constructive contestations’, where urban dwellers not only imagine different futures but also build and enact these futures in the pre-sent. We will study prefigurative urban politics in different aspects of urban life; and inves-tigate in particular the potential for emancipatory and transformative strategic action, and associated institutionalisation of practices by these initiatives. Finally, we will link prefigu-rativism and especially its institutionalisation to ideas and practices of co-creation.
In the second part of the course, we will look at different urban planning systems and cul-tures, concrete urban practices and visions as well as concepts for cities and city-regions of various sizes. We will focus on European countries, such as Portugal and Finland, and their approaches to housing, urban planning, and co-creation. Students are encouraged to con-tribute with their own experiences of cities and communities, including their mechanisms and instruments of urban planning, urban management and urban governance.
