History and Theory in Architecture IX: Critical Urban Theories

Abstract

This course examines how pressing societal challenges – including segregation, migration, gender inequality, extraction, waste, food systems, and digitalisation – are redefining urban discourse. It invites students to question their preconceptions about cities and urban design and to critically reflect on their role as socially engaged city-makers.

Objective

Upon completion of the course, students will be able to: (1) identify the political, ecological, and social transformations that have reoriented urban discourse and demanded new theoretical approaches (2) interpret how societal challenges have been theorised beyond architecture and urban design and how these theories have entered urban design thinking (3) apply concepts from theoretical texts beyond architecture into critical tools for urban design analysis (4) analyse a theoretical text by distinguishing its core argument, underlying assumptions, disciplinary context, and relevance to urban design and societal challenges (5) assess their own theoretical stance in relation to diverse disciplinary voices and contexts, key urban frameworks, and peer feedback (6) create an original theoretical argument that positions a self-selected urban issue within a multidisciplinary framework, drawing on at least three theories from other disciplines to formulate a critically grounded design stance

Content

This course starts from the premise that contemporary urbanisation is inseparable from urgent political, ecological, and societal concerns. Climate change, migration, social inequality, resource extraction, food insecurity, digitalisation, and waste management are changing the material, social, and political conditions under which cities are designed and organised. As these pressures intensify, they expand the scope of architecture and urban design, placing new demands on the conceptual tools through which cities are analysed and designed. Canonical concepts within urban design are often insufficient to address the complexity and scale of contemporary urban problems. Questions of resource extraction, environmental justice, digital transformation, migration networks, social power structures, and food systems demand conceptual tools capable of understanding cities as entangled with planetary processes, political logics, and regimes of inequality. For this reason, architects and urban designers increasingly draw on theories and perspectives developed in other fields, including political ecology, urban sociology, anthropology, media studies, social geography, feminist studies, and postcolonial theory. The course is structured around a series of specific urban questions, explored through titles such as Apartheid City, Arrival City, Waste City, Feminist City, Extractive City, and Food City. Each theme provides a lens for examining how different pressures transform the built environment and challenge the theories through which cities are understood and designed. Students will learn to assess new theoretical concepts and apply them as critical tools for analysing spatial processes and for considering the evolving roles of architects and urban designers.

Resources