OGLM 3130 - Inclusive City

The course explores how urban planning, design, and governance can respond to diverse lived experiences and structural inequalities. The course introduces key concepts such as inclusion, social value, and intersectionality, examining how factors including age, gender, disability, migration, class, and care responsibilities shape everyday urban life and access to opportunities. Through a combination of lectures, case studies, and applied group work, students develop practical skills in stakeholder mapping, participatory processes, and ethnographic approaches to understanding lived experience. The course emphasises the political and ethical dimensions of inclusion, engaging critically with questions of power, representation, and whose voices are prioritised in urban decision-making. Working on a concrete urban brief, students develop an inclusive strategy and design proposal that integrates spatial, programmatic, and governance interventions. They learn to translate insights into design responses, and to embed, measure, and communicate social value through tools such as monitoring frameworks and Theory of Change. Overall, the course bridges theory and practice, equipping students with the tools and critical perspective needed to shape more inclusive urban policies, projects, and outcomes.

Course requirements - grading and assessment

Students will work on a group assignment over a two-week period between Sessions 4 and 5, developing an inclusive urban strategy for a neighbourhood in Paris. This assignment includes fieldwork and direct engagement with the local context. Students will also be required to submit a one-page reflection paper one week after Session 6.

Group project (inclusive urban strategy): 50% – interim submission Session 3, final delivery Session 4.

Participation (in‑class discussion and group work) 30%

Individual reflection paper (1,500–2,000 words): 20% – due one week after Session 6.