Global Urban Development

The aim of this subject is to investigate global processes of urbanisation, focusing particularly on issues of globalisation, capitalism, inequality, colonialism, informality, migration, gender, and state power. More specifically, this subject seeks to develop critical insight into how urban development (and underdevelopment) is linked through global processes, and how contemporary urban landscapes are produced through broader political economic, historical, socio-cultural, and environmental processes. The subject includes historical context in addition to contemporary case studies, and analysis is focused on cities in both the global South and North. Specific topics to be considered include the following: urban poverty and informality; labour and economic production; segregation and marginalisation; gender and urban development; collective mobilisation and social movements; political ecology and environmental vulnerability; urban governance and state power; policing and public security; colonial legacies and race in cities; migration and global climate change.