Course Info: CSI-0163

In this course, we examined the politics of space and the built environment. Space, broadly conceived, is not merely a physical manifestation of social processes that are embedded within it; rather, all social relations are fundamentally spatial. Accordingly this course looked at the social, political, and economic relations that produce space, focusing on urbanization and the spatial production of cities of the Global South and the Global North. We specifically examined cities as produced by a set of contradictions: 1) cities as sites of wealth accumulation shaped by social and spatial inequalities and forms of contestation along constructed lines of difference- whether class, gender, racial, or religious, yet also 2) cities as hopeful sites imbued with ideals of democracy and citizenship, change and possibilities. Through this engagement with cities and their spaces, the class demonstrated how cities are shaped simultaneously by local processes of society, politics, and space, as well as transnational and global circulations of capital, finance, and diaspora. Class requirements included two blogs, two response papers, and a semester long group research project that culminated in final group presentations and individual research papers.