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It is likely that most people will be living in cities by the end of this century. Cities produce social and environmental change, as centres of innovation, technological progress and (for some) increasing personal wealth. They are currently being transformed by digital technologies so that data is becoming as important a component of their infrastructure as material resources. To grasp this future, it is important to understand how cities have evolved in the past, how they grow and live in the present and how they provide incubators for future development. It is important to understand them as places where people live and work, and where distinctive patterns of social life emerge - the spatial cultures of cities. However, it is equally necessary to acknowledge that there can be human and environmental costs to urban life, for example in terms of health and social upheaval and inequality; and to consider alternative futures if the conditions that sustain the contemporary urbanization process were to change.

Addressing urban change and apprehending the complexity of cities demands a distinct interdisciplinary approach across the arts, sciences, social sciences and humanities, each bringing their own theoretical and methodological perspectives to bear on a phenomenon that has traditionally been studied from within disciplinary silos. The thinking behind Understanding Cities and their Spatial Cultures acknowledges the complexity of cities as distinctive material environments for social life, raising questions of how the different dimensions of the built (and imagined) urban environment permeate everyday experiences of the contemporary city.Ìý

Teaching Delivery

This module is taught in 10 weekly lectures, with 10 accompanying weekly workshop sessions and 10 seminars, both led by the PGTA team.Ìý

Indicative Topics

Provisional Lecture ScheduleÌý

• Introduction: Cities and ModernityÌý
• Walking and Walking Tours
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• Walking Tour 1: Cities and PowerÌý
• Urban ImaginariesÌýÌý
• Walking Tour 2: 'Nature' and CitiesÌý
• Ruins and RepairÌýÌý
• Infrastructure and the Digital CityÌýÌý
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Module Aims and Objectives

Curriculum ObjectivesÌý

• a broad interdisciplinary perspective that can help students to think about citiesÌý
• an introduction to a range of different ways in which the city can be researchedÌý
• skills in observation and using diverse data to present a coherent argumentÌý
• confidence to pursue their own research ideasÌý
• team working, time-management and project management skills.Ìý

Learning ObjectivesÌý

• to encourage an understanding of cities as a distinctive mode of social and spatial organisationÌý
• to enhance confidence in the use of theoretical concepts that can be applied across science and the humanities to formulate research questionsÌý
• to employ different disciplinary perspectives in relation to citiesÌý
• to identify appropriate data to research citiesÌýÌý
• to foster independent researchÌý
• to facilitate successful teamworkÌý
• to enhance presentation skills through the use of PechaKucha.Ìý

Recommended Reading

Core readings will be shared via Moodle. However, interested students may wish to look at the following readings which underpin much of the thinking behind the lecture series.Ìý

• Doreen Massey, For Space (SAGE Publications, 2005)
• Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (Verso, 2001)
• Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World (Princeton, 2015)