It is no longer news that more than half of the world’s population are living in urban areas and by 2050, 66 percent of the world will be according to United Nations’ projection. Cities are growing in size and in presence! Literature about cities and urbanism proliferates as new fads of urbanism ebb and flow. With the deluge of information about the woes and potentialities of cities for human futures, this course aims to take a reflective stance and ask as Lewis Mumford once did, ‘What is a City?’ with the goal to gain clarity about the concept, purpose and the nuts and bolts of a city as a human environment.
This course draws upon selected readings in classic and modern philosophy about what a good city is. Even though these philosophical readings discussed cities in the classical and early modern times, they touched upon many dimensions and challenging issues of contemporary cities including size, class, inequality, diversity, justice and their relationship with the urban built environment. These topics are intended to form the content of the course for the subsequent weeks. Whenever available and appropriate, policy reports from international organizations like the United Nations will be included in the topical discussion throughout the semester to make explicit the nexus between theory and practice that lies at the crux of most urban research. The course content is deliberately multi-disciplinary, reflecting the rich and vast interest in the planning and development of cities.
This course is for students who are keen to further engage in a critical inquiry of cities and discussing about what a good city is, beyond the basic content offered in HU1002: Introduction to Urban Planning and HU2002: Urban Life and Urban Planning. The course is crafted with the aim to allow students to co-produce and co-own the course content that they find valuable in informing their interests about the subject matter, and their graduation research projects.
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