JPF2431H S
Instructor: Patricia McCarney, George Baird, Richard Stren
Meeting Section: L0101
Thursday, 10:00AM - 12:00PM

Course Description

The core issues confronting city leaders across the globe are examined in comparative perspective and in a context of shifting global agendas. The study of cities of Latin America, Asia and Africa, are brought together in comparative context with the study of cities of Europe and North America.

Objectives of the Course

With now over half of the population on this planet being urban, the significance of improving our understanding of cities in a global context has never been greater. This course is designed to improve awareness of cities as approached by different disciplines and in different international contexts. The course will introduce theoretical frameworks for understanding city development and then move to the key issues and challenges confronting cities globally. The role of cities as new sites of governance in a global context will be examined through the lens of these core challenges. More generally, the course will explore cities and global change; cities and urban design; cities and social justice; cities and climate change; cities and poverty; state reform and city politics; cities and citizenship; cities and immigration; cities and economic development; cities and governance; and, cities and the political- economy of urban space.

By bringing together leading faculty members on campus and experts in the field who focus on cities in their work, be it within Political Science, Planning, Urban Design, Architecture, Environment and Health, Management, Geography or Social Work, the course will explore, through different disciplinary perspectives, just how the study of cities is evolving for a renewed understanding of the subject, for research and for teaching at the University of Toronto.

Structure of the Course

The course will be offered as a combined fourth year and graduate level course. This offering has been selected in order to accommodate senior undergraduate and graduate students from different departments like Political Science, History, Literature, Geography, Sociology, and Economics as well as students from specific programmes like the design programmes of the Daniels Faculty of Architecture.

The course will be structured as a mixed format—offering students lectures, power-point presentations, city photographs and images, data tables, web-links to international agencies and related reports. Case Studies will be appended to a number of units as illustrations of lecture material.

As a cross-disciplinary course, the aim will be to improve understanding of different disciplinary approaches to the study of cities and consider common veins which run through these approaches and require improved understanding, deeper investigation, and future collaborative work. While disciplinary focus will propel the course, the intent is to bridge traditional disciplinary divides which have tended to obscure significant discourse on cities. This will be achieved in part again by course design wherein panel discussions, guest instructors leading seminar discussions and cross disciplinary faculty will help us to identify and address inter-disciplinary links, divides and areas of resonance in the urban field.

The course will also involve invited guests, urban specialists and practitioners from outside the university to help bridge students and faculty to the broader academic and city community. By mixing formats which include for example lectures, panel discussions, and student only seminars (for discussion and debate on readings and arguments posed by lectures and panellists), the course will allow for movement in our ideas which govern the study of cities.

The course will be organized according to units, each with core and optional reading lists; discussion questions for consideration; and periodic assignments.