Module description
This module invites students to investigate the social, spatial, and economic inequalities that mark urban life in London. The class will focus on broad debates and narratives about progress, development, race, creativity, and justice, tying these large themes to how London is produced, governed, and imagined. Students will draw on their own experiences to examine how everyday life is shaped by the city and its inequalities. A particular emphasis will be placed on issues of social justice and political resistance in the city. Rather than delving deeply into one specific field, the course will introduce, on a weekly basis, a number of different lenses through which urban life and inequality can be seen and analyzed; these include processes such as gentrification, segregation, environmental racism, policing, fortification, health, immigration and enclaving. In addition to learning about the city and the processes that shape it, this course is designed to improve and challenge students, academic skills in critical thinking, writing, and political and geographical debate.
Module Structure
Week 1 - Introduction to the Class and some History of London
Week 2 - Urban Restructuring: Flexible Accumulation and the Rise of London as a Neoliberal City
Week 3 - Community Integration, Thriving, and Mental Health in a Hostile Environment - Experiences from Refugees and People Seeking Asylum
Week 4 - Exploring the postcolonial city
Week 5 - Urban Control: Policing Life in the City
Week 6 - Reading Week
Week 7 - Geographies of Unequal Education
Week 8 - Climate change adaptation
Week 9 - Gentrification: Im/mobility: Fortifications, Borders, Blockades
Week 10 - Occupy the Urban
Week 11- Reflection
Assessment details
Educational aims & objectives
This module will enable students to:
- Describe urban inequality in London.
- Identify and analyze debates over urban redevelopment, the creative class, segregation, gentrification, fortification, and homelessness.
- Make connections between changes in the city and changes in the everyday lives of certain groups and individuals.
- Begin to apply theories of capitalism, consciousness, development, neoliberalism, gender, race, and class to the urban context.
- Recognize recent demographic, economic, architectural, and infrastructural changes in the city of London.
- To make connections between uneven development and unequal education in London and its hinterlands.
Learning outcomes
At the end of this module, students will be able to:
- Understand how the city can be theorised and represented
- Understand how and why urban inequalities occur
- Understand urban regeneration policies and practices
- Evaluate different forms of evidence in order to produce an extended social science argument
- Demonstrate a degree of independent learning
- Understand how uneven development affect education
Teaching pattern
Weekly 2-hour workshops