Anmeldung erforderlich über http://www.zak.kit.edu

The urbanized world faces serious problems. To address them, new visions of what constitutes a “good city” and how to get there are being developed and contested. The politics of urban re-imagination as well as new urban politics as such are changing our cities and call for an informed and responsible participation of citizens. Let’s explore cities and urban cultures paying attention to different world regions. Let’s examine unique and common features of various cities, their current challenges and hopes as well as disputable triumphs and failures. Let’s analyze critical problems of contemporary global urbanization in general and of various types of cities in particular and discuss controversial aspects of global political and economic positioning of cities, of urban strategies, planning, governance, policymaking, identities, inequalities, cultures, branding, etc. Looking at different curious cases, we will focus on some up-to-date issues, referring to cutting-edge academic critique of urban development as well as to contextualized problem-solving attempts of specificities. Please note: the course takes 6 weeks and requires a good knowledge of English.
2–6 LP