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74788-01 - Seminar: Aspirational Urbanism (3 CP)
| Semester | spring semester 2025 |
| Course frequency | Once only |
| Lecturers | Julie Ren (julie.ren@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | Course description This seminar explores theoretical underpinnings of the city as a site of aspiration and aspiration as a driver of urban change. Rooted in a critique of the singular logics that dominate theories of urbanization and at times assign cities to ill-fitting containers of the North and South, we examine aspirational urbanism as an alternative intervention in debates on urban theory. The course aims to critically engage with the way that temporality, particularly futurity, functions in urban studies. We separate aspiration from reductive notions of hope or its use as a blunt instrument of lifestyle commodification. Instead, we approach aspirational urbanism as a critical endeavor of exploring its consequences—ranging from developmentalist fallacies driving global city-making to speculative and algorithmic futures that fragment and financialize urban life. The forces behind striving for more can have differentiated and often unintended consequences, a phenomenon described as the cruelty of optimism. How can we parse related concepts like optimism, possibility, opportunism, and speculation, which are so often taken for granted as inherent qualities of city life? Why are cities especially prone to becoming sites where the violence of imagination is inflicted? How can the capacity to aspire reveal the way that aspiration is neither available nor necessary to all urbanites, and why does this matter? |
| Learning objectives | • Builds on dominant debates in urban theory • Critiques positivism of temporality/urban future • Research connecting cities across North/South divides • Critical reflection: challenge its relevance through empirical cases |
| Bibliography | Readings/Program Morning sessions will be comprised of plenary discussions led by the lecturer and students. Afternoon sessions are more interactive, with the intent of working with and thinking through the scholarship. 2 June: Urban Futures 9-12 Datta, A. (2019). Postcolonial urban futures: Imagining and governing India’s smart urban age. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 37(3), 393-410. Ong, A. (2011). “Introduction: Worlding cities, or the art of being global.” In A. Roy and A. Ong (eds.) Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global. Wiley-Blackwell: 1-25. Simone, A. (2016). City of potentialities: An introduction. Theory, Culture & Society, 33(7-8), 5-29. Swilling, M., Pieterse, E., & Hajer, M. (2019). Futuring, experimentation, and transformative urban politics. In R. Poli (ed) Handbook of Anticipation. Springer, 1-28. Optional: Appadurai, A. (2013). The future as cultural fact: Essays on the global condition. London/New York: Verso. 13-17 Un/Doing Futures: we explore imaginations of the urban future to consider the underlying normative politics, the presents that are displaced, the various stakeholders involved, and the ways that past/present/future are entwined in the city Prepare: Bring one visual depiction of the urban future 3 June: Fictional geographies 9-12 Anderson, B. (2019). Cultural geography II: The force of representations. Progress in Human Geography, 43(6), 1120-1132. Haraway, D. J. (2013). SF: Science fiction, speculative fabulation, string figures, so far. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, 3(21), 1-18. Ridanpää, J. (2007). Laughing at northernness: postcolonialism and metafictive irony in the imaginative geography. Social & Cultural Geography, 8(6), 907-928. Said, E. (1990). Narrative, geography and interpretation. New Left Review, 180(1990), 81-97. 13-17 Analyzing fiction together: following a brief introduction to cultural representation, we practice the work of untangling sign and signifier in the representation of urban futures Prepare: Bring one fictional depiction of the urban future (either an image, video or synopsis from a text) 4 June: Speculative urbanism 9-12 Beckert, J. (2016). Imagined futures: Fictional expectations and capitalist dynamics. Harvard University Press. (Only “Introduction” is required) Goldman, M. (2011). Speculative urbanism and the making of the next world city. International journal of urban and regional research, 35(3), 555-581. Leitner, H., & Sheppard, E. (2023). Unleashing speculative urbanism: Speculation and urban transformations. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 55(2), 359-366. Leszczynski, A. (2016). Speculative futures: Cities, data, and governance beyond smart urbanism. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 48(9), 1691-1708. 13-17 Exploratory case discussions: from ghost cities to eco-cities in the desert and more banal forms of financialization of housing, we critically discuss the promises and attempt to calculate the costs and risks of speculative urbanism Prepare: bring examples of speculative urbanism from three “very different” contexts 5 June: (Cruel) optimism 9-12 Berlant, L. (2020). Cruel optimism. Duke University Press. (Introduction and Chapter 1: Cruel Optimism) Anderson, B., Awal, A., Cockayne, D., Greenhough, B., Linz, J., Mazumdar, A., ... & Williams, A. (2023). Encountering Berlant part two: Cruel and other optimisms. The Geographical Journal, 189(1), 143-160. Eagleton, T. (2015). Hope without optimism. University of Virginia Press. (Chapter 1: The Banality of Optimism) Pettit, H. (2019). The cruelty of hope: Emotional cultures of precarity in neoliberal Cairo. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 37(4), 722-739. 13-17 The place of affect: we undertake in-class (in-Basel) research to decipher the possibility of empirically establishing an affective atmosphere 6 June: Aspiration 9-12 Appadurai, A. (2004) “The Capacity to Aspire: Culture and the Terms of Recognition.” In Culture and Public Action, edited by Vijayendra Rao, and Michael Walton. Stanford University Press, 59–84. Bunnell, T., Gillen, J., & Ho, E. L. E. (2018). The prospect of elsewhere: Engaging the future through aspirations in Asia. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108(1), 35-51. Ruszczyk, H. A., & Price, M. (2020). Aspirations in grey space: Neighbourhood governance in Nepal and Jordan. Area, 52(1), 156-163. 13-17 Research presentation “Aspirational Urbanism and the Recodification of Defiance” and discussion of your case study assignments |
| Comments | Open to MA students from other programs with the priority for CU and CS MA students on timely registration. |
| Admission requirements | registration required / de-registration recommended |
| Course application | • Students must come to seminars having read the assigned reading; highly suggest preparing written reflections to be prepared to discuss in class (noting specific passages with pages, references to other work, more nuanced analyses or interpretations that might be challenging to draw up ex tempore) • Small additional preparations are noted below per session. • Reading discussants: Students critically introduce one text (10 minutes) and facilitate discussion, these will be randomly assigned before the seminar begins with further instruction • Case study assignment: assess possibilities and limits of aspirational urbanism for an empirical case (max 2000 words) submitted until June 20 |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
| Block | See individual dates | ||
Dates
| Date | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|
| Monday 02.06.2025 | 10.15-17.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 107 |
| Tuesday 03.06.2025 | 10.15-17.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 107 |
| Wednesday 04.06.2025 | 10.15-17.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 107 |
| Thursday 05.06.2025 | 10.15-17.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 107 |
| Friday 06.06.2025 | 10.15-17.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 107 |
| Modules |
Module: The Urban across Disciplines (Master's degree program: Critical Urbanisms) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment details | Pass/Fail |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | no repetition |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Fachbereich Urban Studies |