Syllabus
1. Introduction to the course - Basic information about course. Course requirements and evaluation criteria.
2. How to study urban geography - Differentiated perspectives on urban social environments, epistemology, main theoretical approaches, urban journals, literature, development of the discipline and the context.
3. Classical urban theories - Classical urban theories; industrialization and urbanization; Gemeinschaft and Gesselschaft; mechanical and organic solidarity; urban personality
4. Theories of urbanisation - Theories of urbanisation, differential theories of urban origin; definition of urbanisation; urban revolution; attributes of urban environment; structure of pre-industrial and industrial city, stages and types of urban processes.
5. Chicago school of urban sociology - Social ecology approach; organisation of urban research at the Chicago University; quantitative and qualitative research methods; space and place in urban studies.
6. Radical political economy - Neomarxist approaches, circuits of capital, social justice
7. Theory of structuration and social environment - Social environment, social climate, social space, social structure, structuration, routine
8. Humanistic approach - life-world, taken for granted world, action and agency, experience and identity, social nature of urban life, space and place, sense of place, home/hometown/homeland, meaning of urban places, humanistic geography today
9. Postmodern urban geography - Condition of postmodernity (Harvey), postmodern urbanism and Los Angeles school (Dear, Flusty), postmetropolis (Soja), edge cities (Garreau).
10. Urban planning - Urban models, urban planning principles, cities for people, post-industrial city, new urbanism
11. Post-socialist paradigm and relevancy of Western theories for post-socialist city
12. Time geography in urban research - Human activities in time-space, spatial mobility, daily and life trajectories, accessibility, prism, city and everyday life, mobile phone data.
13. Discussion seminar
Annotation
The course is focused on the variability of research perspectives in urban studies. The key theoretical approaches are selected in the context of the specific development of Central and Eastern European (CEE) urban system and the internal structures of cities within the region. The course offers profound knowledge of spatial patterns, urban processes and developments through the lens of theoretical and methodological concepts from the traditional urban sociology, Chicago school, Marxist and humanistic approaches, time-space geography, structuration and social environment theory. The course consists of twelve lectures combined with exercises and two discussion seminars. The main emphasis is on reading, classroom discussion and written assignments of the varying explanatory power of different theoretical concepts and their usefulness for CEE urban studies.
Readings and detailed information on the course are available in Moodle: http://dl2.cuni.cz/course/view.php?id=736.