Urban Governance and the Politics of Planning in the Global South

SES 5502 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

This course starts from the premise that politics and governance arrangements can both enable and constrain effective and socially just urban planning action. Using a focus on cities in the developing world, the course examines an array of governance structures (centralized versus decentralized institutions; local versus national states; participatory budgeting, etc.) and political conditions (democracy versus authoritarianism; neoliberal versus populist versus leftist party politics; social movements) that are relatively common to cities of the global south. In addition to assessing the impacts of these structures and conditions on urban policy formation and implementation, the course asks which governance arrangements and/or political contexts are more or less likely to produce equitable, inclusive, and sustainable urban environments. In cities of the developing world, inequities and exclusion are among the principal societal challenges, and divisions based on class, race, ethnicity, and migrant status are common. Equally problematic are inequalities based on “housing classes,” which often manifest in residential gating and the stigmatization of residents without access to formal housing.

To address these and other relevant questions, the course is structured around discussion of cases and theories that give us the basis for documenting the ways that politics affect urban policy and the built environment of the city more generally. Among a range of policy domains, special attention is paid to transportation, housing, informal vending, and mega-project development, with most examples drawn from Latin America, South Asia, East Asia, and Africa.