Universitat Internacional de Catalunya - Barcelona

Participation As a Tool for Upgrading

• code 12085
• course 1
• term Semester 1
• type OB
• credits 3

Main language of instruction: English

Head instructor

Dra. María del Carmen MENDOZA - cmendoza@uic.es

Office hours

Teaching staff are available by appointment through email.

Professors:

Dr Nabeel Hamdi

Environmental sustainability and socio-spatial justice dynamics and struggles are always manifested in processes of transformation of places and communities, whether they are explicitly acknowledged and addressed by planning agents or not. International cooperation frameworks should make explicit these two goals—environmental sustainability and socio-spatial justice—as guiding benchmarks of their planning efforts. However, what they mean for different stakeholders in different contexts, as well as how they are achieved and how are costs and benefits of such processes distributed may vary greatly. 

In this course, we will be examining two interrelated research questions: What has planning done and what can planning do, when operating through frameworks of international cooperation, to serve as an instrument for the promotion of environmental sustainability and socio-spatial justice? The former question, what has planning done, uses a methodological approach rooted in qualitative examination of case studies. The latter question, what can planning do, relies on normative approaches to scholarship composed of explorations into planning and policy-making theory. We will mainly perform these tasks through the examination of case studies under-criticized in the planning literature. The students will add critical and comparative analysis of case studies around the world.

The “what has planning done” exploration in this course aims to uncover the many guises under which planning does or does not deliver its emancipatory promise. Implicit or explicit in virtually all planning scholarship is the normative premise that acts of planning should be emancipatory, i.e., they should liberate communities from socio-spatial conditions that oppress them individually and collectively. But the evidence in all too many places is that acts of planning easily become the opposite—oppressive. When planning compounds the disenfranchisement of the subjects upon which it is deployed, thus subverting the discipline’s supposed intent, we have a planning paradox. 

The challenge of the second question, “what can planning do,” seeks to point to ways of overcoming this paradox. Teaching objectives: to promote critical thinking skills with which the students can analyze and problem-solve professional/ academic situations; to promote a sense of professional social and environmental responsibility; and to promote a sense of empowerment and desire for continuous education so that students can constantly transform themselves and their communities.

• 01 - That students apply the knowledge acquired and the capacity to solve problems in underpriviledged places in multidisciplinary contexts related to the area of international cooperation.
• 02 - That students may be capble of integrating knowledge and face the complexity of formulating their opinion from information which may be incomplete or limited, and that include reflections on the ethic and social responsibilities related to the area of cooperation and arquitecture in post disaster situations.
• 03 - That students may capable of communicating the conslusions of their research as well as the knowledge and resasons that support it, to a specialized and non-specialized public, with clarity and security.
• 04 - That students may acquire the learning capacities in order to continue studying in an individual and selfmanaged way in the field of international cooperation.
• 05 - Aquire a methodolgy based on interdisciplinary criteria in order to develop sustainable architectural projects.
• 07 - Be capable of aplying to a specific project the knowledge acquired.
• 08 - The capacity to develop planing tecniques of projects developed by interdisciplinary profesionals of cooperation organizations.
• 09 - Acquire the knowledge of urban develpment strategies in acordance to local and regional cultures
• 10 - Be capable of developing a critical analysis through the selection of global urban developmpent criteria and relate them to local administrative models.
• 11 - Be capable of understanding the needs in order to give multidisciplinary responses to complex problems related to urban planning
• 12 - Be capable of developing a theoretical framework regarding all the main points of a planning process, from the territorial to the intermediate scale.
• 13 - From a specialized standpoint, to be able to select the criteria for sustainable development solutions applied to planning projects at a territorial, regional and local scale.
• 14 - To know and apply the practical and theoretical principles for the conservation of sustainable resources in urban development.
• 15 - To know how to extract global identity factors aplicable to local territorial situations
• 17 - Be capable of offering integrated transport system solutions that are adecuate to sustainble urban development.
• 23 - To be albe to elaborate a critical analysis of development projects at all scales implemented by international cooperation agencies and local entities.
• 24 - To know how to manage projects of different scales with the objective of prioritizing individual interventions in multidisciplinary tasks

The students will reach a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the opportunities and challenges of international cooperation for fostering environmental sustainability and socio-spatial justice through the examination of theories and case studies. 

They will acquire theoretical and analytical frameworks to identify and analyze the effectiveness of institutional arrangements for international cooperation, assess their impact on environmental sustainability and socio-spatial justice, and point to specific ways some of the challenges may be addressed.

Group work, case study analysis and group presentations.

Basic bibliography listed below, class material will be provided prior. 

Basic bibliography listed below, class material will be provided prior.

SOLAC. State of Latin American and Caribbean Cities 2012: Towards a New Urban Transition.

Krellenberg, K. et al. Adaptation to Climate Change in Megacities of Latin America. ECLAC -­‐ Project Documents Collection, 2014. Chapter IV: “Practical Application and Governance of climate Change in Megacities of Latin America,” 35-­‐60.

Irazábal, C. (ed.) Ordinary Places, Extraordinary Events: Citizenship, Democracy, and Public Space in Latin America. Series: Planning, History and Environment. New York, London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2008.

Irazábal, C. (ed.). Transbordering Latin Americas: Liminal Places, Cultures, and Powers (T)Here. Series: Routledge Research in Transnationalism. New York, London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.

Irazábal, C. “Revisiting urban planning in Latin America and the Caribbean.” Global Report on Human Settlements 2009 Planning Sustainable Cities: Policy Directions.

NDP Steering Committee and Secretariat, 2013. “Happiness: Towards a New Development Paradigm.” Report of the Kingdom of Bhutan.

Alexander, Christopher/ Ishikawa, Sara/ Silverstein, Murray: A pattern language. New York,1977.

Arnstein, Sherry: The ladder of citizen participation. New York,1969.

De Certeau, Michel: The practice of everyday life. Berkeley, 1984.

Golda-Pongratz, Kathrin: Landscapes of pressure. Barcelona, 2014.

Guattari, Felix/ Rolnik, Suely: Micropolítica. Cartografías del deseo. Madrid, 2006.

Habermas, Jürgen: The structural transformation of the public sphere. Cambridge, 1989.

Hayden, Dolores: Building suburbia. New York, 1989.

Jencks, Charles/ Silver, Nathan: Adhocism. The case for improvisation. New York, 1972.

Kroll, Lucien: The architecture of complexity. London, 1986.

Latour, Bruno: Reassembling the Social. Oxford, 2005.

Lee, Pamela M.: Object to be destroyed. The work of Gordon Matta-Clark. Cambridge/Massachusetts, 2000.

Peran, Martí/ CCCB (eds.): Post-it-city. Ciutats ocasionals. Barcelona, 2008.

Rudofsky, Bernhard: Architecture without architects. New York, 1964.

Sennett, Richard: The fall of public man. New York, 1977.

Smith, Neil: The new urban frontier: Gentrification and the revanchist city. London/ New York,1996.

Turner, John F.C.: Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments. London, 1976.

Ward, Colin: Vandalism. London, 1973.

Whyte, William: The social life of small urban spaces. New York, 1980.

Vidler, Anthony: Warped space. Art, architecture and anxiety in modern culture. Cambridge/Massachusetts, 2000.