Contemporary theories in urban studies 1900-SM-1-33

Pełny opis przedmiotu In 1950 there were only two mega cities in the world: New York and Tokyo. Today we have a few dozen of them and it is them: from Mexico to Lagos, Karachi to Beijing, set the horizon for what is becoming a city and urbanity in the 21st century. The theory in urban studies has been strongly circumstantial for most of the twentieth century: it is on the basis of Western cities that general regularities were created. What if we look at the process of urbanization not through the prism of New York or Paris at all, but through Bogota, Kinshasa or Jakarta? What kind of city theory emerges when we reject the occasional glasses?

This course will allow students to learn about the basic characteristics of the phenomenon called "planetary urbanization". The city and the urbanity as we knew it are undergoing a fundamental redefinition today. We are intellectually helpless in the face of this transformation, since the entire conceptual apparatus at our disposal was created on the basis of Western historical experience. Therefore, the starting point for these classes will be the spatial processes currently taking place in (mega)-cities of every (almost) continent. We will wonder how radical is the current revaluation. Is there really, as some claim, a fundamental transformation of almost every sphere of human activity taking place before our eyes?

It is the megacities that constitute a kind of "laboratory" where new theories and concepts used by contemporary urban researchers and researchers are generated. As part of the exercises for this lecture, students will be able to get to know them in more detail and discuss them. The aim of the lecture is to outline the context in which these theories were born. We will assess whether Rem Koolhaas' research project in Lagos - the first serious attempt to forge a theory based on the non-Western experience of urbanization - was a failure or a success worth following. We will be looking for what David Harvey's followers might call the "spatial cohesion of the city". (structured urban coherence). What methods should be used to study agglomerations with 40 million inhabitants? Are we doomed only to describe fragments or can we be tempted to try a synthesis? Theories and research discussed during the lecture will show how to look for the key to understanding the uniqueness of individual places - even if they are multi-millionaire and ever-changing megacities - and modern, planetary urbanization.