Urban political economy

The course is composed of 8 lectures, a guest lecture and a photo-essay seminar

1. Introduction – the city as social product
2. The production of urban space under capitalism
3. The urbanization of neoliberalism
4. The neoliberalization of urbanism
5. Gentrification as urban policy?

Guest lecture by Prof. Melih Yeşilbağ, Ankara University

6. Appropriation of space
7. Ordinary urbanizations
8. On urban alternatives (with Raphaël Hasenknopf, ULB/FNRS)

Photo-essay seminar

The course consists of a political-economy approach to contemporary urban change. It builds on Henri Lefebvre’s conceptualization of the production of space as main theoretical foundation.

It is composed of a series of lectures exploring in turn the role of the spatial practices of capital, State-territorial regulations, and city dwellers’ appropriation of space in the social production of urban space. To do so, the course combines insights from different theoretical frameworks, most notably critical urban theory and neo-institutional approaches to urban governance, as well as a dose of post-colonial urban theory.

The overarching aim of this course is to help developing a critical perspective on urban change departing from representations that tend to naturalize urban dynamics or reduce urban issues to mere techno-management problems, therefore obscuring their deeply political character. Cities are rather considered here as social constructs shaped by constant negotiations, competitions and struggles between unevenly endowed social actors.

ex cathedra lectures, with room for interactions
guest leccture
photo essay seminar
 

References, bibliography, and recommended reading

see suggested reading list on UV

Course notes

• Université virtuelle

Contacts

mathieu.van.criekingen@ulb.be

Campus

Plaine

Method(s) of evaluation

• Personal work

Personal work

see course outline 

Mark calculation method (including weighting of intermediary marks)

100% assignement = photo essay

Language(s) of evaluation

• english