ASPO 25A30 - The politics of urbanism

This course explores cities as spaces of political life, material inequality, and collective struggle. Drawing on critical urban geography, feminist and postcolonial perspectives, we examine the politics that shape urban processes, and how these processes, in turn, shape everyday life. Rather than viewing the city as a container for policies, we treat it as a site of contestation, memory, and future-making. From planning and displacement to care, mobility, and climate justice, students will critically analyse how power is inscribed in space—and how urban subjects resist, negotiate, and reimagine their environments.

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Weekly 2-hour sessions combining lecture and seminar work. Each class introduces key concepts and debates, followed by discussion of the required reading, case-study analysis, mapping/visual exercises

Assessment: one midterm test; one final policy brief post analysing a conflictual urban project or neighbourhood change through mapping, actors, political processes and resistance; and assessed class participation in discussions and exercises.