Dr Laura Antona, Prof Claire Mercer and Prof Gareth Jones CKK 3.21

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Urban Policy (LSE and Sciences Po) and MSc in Urbanisation and Development. This course is available on the MSc in Development Management, MSc in Development Management (LSE and Sciences Po), 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 Human Geography and Urban Studies (Research) and MSc in Inequalities and Social Science. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

The number of students that can be accommodated is limited. If the course is over-subscribed, places will be allocated at the Department’s discretion and a waiting list may be created. For further details, please contact your relevant Programme Coordinator.

This course provides a grounding in key debates in urban studies with specific reference to the Global South. It highlights the interconnections between urban theory, research and policy. Anticipated topics include The City and Comparative Urbanism; Critical Urban Theory; Neoliberalism and Financialisation; Urban Governance and Citizenship; Social Life of Cities; Peripheral Urbanism; Housing Cities; Migration and Labour; Urban Exception and Spectacle; Environmentalism and Heat. Lectures will draw from staff research, with particular emphasis on Brazil, Ghana, India, Mexico, Singapore, South Africa and Tanzania.

In the Department of Geography and Environment, teaching will be delivered through a combination of classes/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 Autumn Term.

This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the AT.

A comprehensive reading list mostly focussing on articles will be provided. Useful books include:

• A. Amin & N. Thrift, Seeing like a City (2016);
• A. Amin & M. Lancione (eds), Grammars of the Urban Ground (2022);
• G. Bhan, The Routledge Companion to Planning in the Global South (2017);
• S. Chant & C. McIlwaine, Cities, Slums and Gender in the Global South (2016);
• R. de Satge & V. Watson, Urban Planning in the Global South: conflicting rationalities in contested space (2019);
• S. Fox & T. Goodfellow, Cities and Development (2016);
• E. Glaeser, Triumph of the City (2012);
• M. Lancione & C. McFarlane (eds), Global Urbanism: knowledge, power and the city (2021);
• C. Lemanski & C. Marx (eds) The City and Urban Poverty, (2015);
• F. Miraftab & N. Kudva (eds) Cities of the Global South Reader, (2015);
• M. Murray, The Urbanism of Exception: the dynamics of global-city building in the twenty-first century (2017);
• S. Parnell & E. Pieterse, Africa's Urban Revolution (2014);
• J. Robinson, Comparative Urbanism: Tactics for Global Urban Studies (2022);
• R. Rolnik, Urban Warfare: Housing under the Empire of Finance (2019);
• P. Sendra & R. Sennett, Designing Disorder: experiments and disruptions in the city (2020);
• A. Simone & E. Pieterse, New urban worlds: Inhabiting dissonant times (2018).

Essay (70%, 3000 words) in the WT.
Presentation (30%) in the AT.