Urbanization and Development

The main objective of the course is to interrogate and deconstruct the assumed relationships between spatial change and economic development with the latter understood as employment and prosperity conditions driven by market and investment dynamics at territorial scales that both include and transcend the city. In addition to highlighting the inter-relationships between urban growth and national or global economic priorities, on one hand, and the connections between cities and their surrounding hinterlands on the other, we are interested in the implications of these relationships for equity and inclusion, ecological sustainability, and thus social as well as environmental justice. Beyond examining the social and economic exigencies of citizens in the face of these relationships and examining their capacities to accommodate, modify, or reject the priorities, projects, and policies imposed by planners, designers, governing authorities, investors or other capitalists, and multilateral development agencies with specific urban development agendas, the course focuses considerable attention on the notion of regions, regional planning, and how climate crisis is transforming the territorial scale at which planners and designers will need to operation. Readings draw primarily from Latin America, South Asia, East Asia, and the Middle East, although evidence from Europe and the United States is used for contrast, particularly in the focus on regionalism.