32501
Advanced Seminar
WiSe 18/19: The Urban Condition: Politics and Public Space in the American City
Jeremy Williams
Comments
How do you read a city? What tools and approaches are available to us when we try to understand and capture the complexity of contemporary urbanity? This class seeks to provoke discussion around these questions through using public space, and an understanding of the city as a space more generally, as a way to understand the contemporary city. To do this, we will examine the role of politics in shaping the urban fabric from both a theoretical perspective – in understanding city space as a production of broader flows and processes – as well as a more local one, including the context in which city administrators and politicians make decisions about the urban fabric. In addition we will study different conceptions of urban life, including thinking critically about issues such as development, spatial segregation and exclusion, as well as questions of gentrification. We will also look at the material changes that cities are currently undergoing, including reflecting on the implications of evolving urban norms, including the role that technology plays in contemporary social life. Furthermore, we will engage with different methods and approaches to capturing the experience of the city, including non-conventional and artistic interventions. Finally, we will conduct ethnographic work in the field in Berlin as part of an attempt to understand city space in a holistic way, situated at the intersection of both intellectual and experiential understandings.
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16 Class schedule
Regular appointments
Thu, 2018-10-18 12:00 - 14:00
Thu, 2018-10-25 12:00 - 14:00
Thu, 2018-11-01 12:00 - 14:00
Thu, 2018-11-08 12:00 - 14:00
Thu, 2018-11-15 12:00 - 14:00
Thu, 2018-11-22 12:00 - 14:00
Thu, 2018-11-29 12:00 - 14:00
Thu, 2018-12-06 12:00 - 14:00
Thu, 2018-12-13 12:00 - 14:00
Thu, 2018-12-20 12:00 - 14:00
Thu, 2019-01-10 12:00 - 14:00
Thu, 2019-01-17 12:00 - 14:00
Thu, 2019-01-24 12:00 - 14:00
Thu, 2019-01-31 12:00 - 14:00
Thu, 2019-02-07 12:00 - 14:00
Thu, 2019-02-14 12:00 - 14:00