Back
| Semester | fall semester 2020 |
| Course frequency | Once only |
| Lecturers | Mona Fawaz (mona.fawaz@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | This year’s distinguished visiting professor is Prof. Dr. Mona Fawaz. She is an associate professor of urban planning and studies in the Department of Architecture and Design at the American University of Beirut. Based on an interdisciplinary approach that looks at actor strategies, legal/informal regulatory frameworks, and property regimes, her work investigates the social production of city spaces in a series of empirical case studies taken in informal settlements as well as in large-scale public and private urban developments. Fawaz is writing a book provisionally titled “When the Plan Fails and Urban Regulations Are Bypassed: Narrating Beirut from its Peripheries.” Juxtaposed against a dominant historiography that describes Beirut’s growth as a process originating from a central core, the project brings to light narratives taken from the city’s peripheries that together posit a revised vision of the city’s production: one where informal settlements, refugee camps, and old villages appear as laboratories of city making. The project focuses on the formative period 1950–1975 and seeks to describe an alternative history of the production of Beirut, rather than a history of its peripheries. Fawaz completed her graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after earning a bachelor of architecture at the American University of Beirut. Recent publications include “The Politics of Property in Planning: Hezbollah’s Reconstruction of Haret Hreik as Case Study,” in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (May 2014), and “Towards the Right to the City in Informal Settlements,” in Locating Right to the City in the Global South (Routledge, 2013). This seminar is designed as an introduction to a number of current debates in the field of urban planning. Its main purpose is to help students question the process of “intervening” on cities and their regions by exploring critically the position of city planners vis-à-vis other actors, the goals that motivate these interventions, the assumptions that justify them, and the tools used to implement them. It does so from a position anchored in the Global South where the profession of city planning was historically introduced with colonialism and embedded within its practices. However, rather than only covering the dark history of planning and its questionable present, the course also investigates the possibility of activating the progressive potentials of planning, a profession heavily invested in the notions of “common good” and “public interest” at a time when these ideals are severely compromised globally. The course raises questions such as: How, where, and by who are planning interventions currently being practiced and implemented? How have these practices evolved over the past decades? What are the main challenges faced by urban planners and policymakers today and how does planning theory respond to these challenges? How are the goals of planning practice being reviewed? What are the trade-offs that planners have to make? Who wins? Who looses? What types of skills do today’s urban planners need? The course does not seek to provide answers to these questions. It instead addresses them by elaborating on the necessary theoretical and analytical frameworks needed for students to develop their own thinking and positions with respect to the variety of ongoing planning practices. Special emphasis is placed on contexts of the Middle-East. Class readings and discussions are combined with real-life case studies. This course is structured around four main entry points to the theorization of the planning process. These are: 1. Defining the Subject: Planning Practice and Theory across East and West 2. Classical questions in Planning Theory: Then and Now 3. Planning Tools and Strategies: Selected Approaches and Case Study Analysis 4. Important Planning Ideas: What principles have inspired planners? |
| Learning objectives | This course is structured around four main entry points to the theorization of the planning process. These are: 1. Defining the Subject: Planning Practice and Theory across East and West 2. Classical questions in Planning Theory: Then and Now 3. Planning Tools and Strategies: Selected Approaches and Case Study Analysis 4. Important Planning Ideas: What principles have inspired planners? |
| Comments | This course takes place from 18th to 29th January - subject to changes. Dates will be confirmed asap. |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|
No dates available. Please contact the lecturer.
| Modules |
Module: Projects and Processes of Urbanization (Master's degree program: Critical Urbanisms (Start of studies before 01.08.2020)) Module: The Urban across Disciplines (Master's degree program: Critical Urbanisms) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| 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 |