Sociology of the City

Description

This course is concerned with the city as it is experienced today: as shifting mixes of public and private spaces in which disruptions provoke different points of view, multiple memories and complex associations. Discussions include the mobile city; mapping the ‘authentic’ city; the sentient city; the invisible city; the global city; cities as entertainment machines; nature and the city; deterritorialization and the futures of urban public space. Christchurch, as both colonial site of a neo-gothic garden city and re-imagined postcolonial site of disaster, risk and vitality, circulates throughout the course.  Therefore two case studies- on what was and what may be Christchurch cap each term of the course.

This course is an interdisciplinary option combining historical, literary and social science approaches to the city.

The first section (A) of the course (weeks 1-6) will deal with the city as it was by looking at topics covering the creation and evolution of the modern city and the modern urban subject. These include: the flaneur and street life; architecture and urban modernity; suburbia, and urban planning. This section derives from a historical-literary approach and also includes insights and critiques from the history of sociology and urban studies.

The second section (B) of the course (weeks 7-12), is concerned with the city as it is experienced today: as shifting mixes of public and private spaces in which disruptions provoke different points of view, multiple memories and complex associations. It focuses on cities as constantly changing networks, experiences and configurations of technospaces; of visible and invisible technologies meshing with always provisional, embodied lives.