Laura Antona

This course is available on the MSc in African Development, MSc in City Design and Social Science, MSc in Development Management, MSc in Development Studies, MSc in Environment and Development, MSc in Environmental Policy, Technology and Health (Environment and Development) (LSE and Peking University), MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation, MSc in Gender, Policy and Inequalities, MSc in Health and International Development, MSc in Human Geography and Urban Studies (Research), MSc in Local Economic Development, MSc in Regional And Urban Planning Studies, MSc in Urban Policy (LSE and Sciences Po) and MSc in Urbanisation and Development. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

Experience and/or knowledge of development and/or urbanisation in the South would be a distinct advantage

The course examines the patterns, processes and implications of urbanisation in developing societies (with an emphais on the Middle East region), and with particular reference to the survival and well-being of low-income groups. The conceptual and empirical focus of the course revolves around strategies adopted at individual household and community levels to ensure sustainable livelihoods, and the interrelations of grassroots processes with policy interventions on the part of governments, international development agencies and NGOs. Specific themes include: trends in urban development in the 20th and 21st centuries; the conceptualisation and measurement of poverty and the urban; the 'urbanisation' of poverty; poverty reduction strategies by international organisations; intersectionality; urban informality; urbanisation of violence and conflict; and urban social movements.

In the Department of Geography and Environment, teaching will be delivered through a combination of seminars, pre-recorded lectures, live online lectures and other supplementary interactive live activities.

This course is delivered through a combination of seminars and lectures across Michaelmas Term.

This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of Michaelmas.

Students will be expected to produce one formative essay during the course, as well as to prepare seminar presentations (usually in pairs), and to be actively involved in seminar discussions, including as discussants and rapporteurs.

Detailed reading lists will be provided during the course.  No one book covers the entire course.  However, recommended essential reading is as follows: N. Brenner (ed), Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization, 2014; F Engles, The Condition of the Working Class in England, Oxford, 2009 (1845); S.Parnell and S.Oldfield (Eds), The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South, 2014; S Graham, Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism, 2011; A Mbembe, Essays on Decolonization: Out of the Dark Night, 2021; T Mitchell, The Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity, 2002; Marx and Kelling, Knowing urban informalities, Urban Studies, 2019, 56, 3; United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Knowledge Platform.

Essay (50%, 2500 words) in the MT.
Essay (50%, 2500 words) in the LT.