DHUM 27A67 - What is a City? Politics, Experience, and Space

This course explores the city as a political, experiential, and material form. Moving from the ancient polis to the modern metropolis and contemporary global cities, we examine how urban life shapes and is shaped by collective action, sensory experience, social structures, and political struggle. Through philosophy, sociology, critical theory and urban studies, students investigate how cities produce forms of public life, modes of perception, and conditions of inequality, as well as possibilities for resistance, reimagination, and collective action. Readings span classical texts, modern critiques, and contemporary interventions to address a central question: what does it mean to inhabit and make a city?

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

Understand how classical conceptions of the polis inform political life, public space, and urban belonging.

Analyze central theories of urbanization and of modern urban experience,

Evaluate the dynamics of power, inequality, and resistance that shape urban space and everyday life.

Contemplate alternative urban futures by drawing on critical urban theory, planning debates, and speculative forms of collective life.