Planetary Urbanization — Ein Theorieseminar

Fall Semester 2017

In recent deca­des, urba­ni­sa­ti­on has beco­me a glo­bal phe­no­me­non. Urban are­as are expan­ding ever fur­ther, giving rise to enti­re­ly new urban phe­no­me­na such as the implo­si­on and explo­si­on of urban regi­ons, the dis­in­te­gra­ti­on of the urban hin­ter­land, the for­ma­ti­on of urban cor­ri­dors, the lar­ge-sca­le indus­tria­li­sa­ti­on and urba­ni­sa­ti­on of agri­cul­tu­ral are­as, the emer­gence of exten­si­ve logi­stics net­works and ‘ope­ra­tio­nal land­scapes’ for raw mate­ri­al extra­c­tion, and even pro­ces­ses that can be inter­pre­ted as the urba­ni­sa­ti­on of oce­ans. Such new urban phe­no­me­na have recent­ly trig­ge­red a hea­ted deba­te at the inter­na­tio­nal level on the rede­fi­ni­ti­on of urba­ni­sa­ti­on. Based on this high­ly topi­cal deba­te, the theo­ry semi­nar offers an intro­duc­tion to urban theo­ry, theo­re­ti­cal thin­king and working with texts.

Tea­ching: Chris­ti­an Schmid