Today more than half of the world’s
population lives in
cities, providing much of the social and human capital fueling
contemporary globalization. We will study cities explicitly through the
lens, of "globalization." Using the latest theories of emerging
global
cities we will use architecture, urban design, film, text, images and
reportage as different forms to read the city and understand what
cities in the 21st century mean. Our focus will be on emerging Asian
and Middle Eastern cities currently heavily under construction and
rapidly globalizing. Dubai and Istanbul has been at the forefront
of developing into
a postmodern global city, and others, even secondary cities like Abu
Dhabi and cities in China like Shanghai, Chongqing,
reconstruction of Beijing, as the olympic city, and the
Sinification of Hong Kong and Taipei presenting themselves as
attractive locations and
global hubs. The study of global cities thus involves taking a
multidimensional and interdisciplinary look at how humans build and
inhabit their environments, and how these built environments in turn
shape human beings and their collective futures. Will cities be able to
maintain their distinctive identities or will they become reproducible
and homogenized entities? There will be one mandatory field trip to
explore the other side of the "local-global" nexus in LA.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
• Understand the
key perspectives in interdisciplinary theoretical debates on “global
cities”
• Understand fundamental
relationships between urban dynamics and transnational cultural
and political-economic processes
• Understand how globalization is
reproduced and challenged through urban dynamics and the social and
political practices of urban actors.