Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Utrecht University (from 2018)
The course introduces students to important substantive areas and concepts in the governance and planning of cities and urban regions. It explores current issues and debars in selected sectoral planning systems, their institutions and planning instruments, their interests and ways of thinking. This includes environmental and nature conservation policies, infrastructure policies (eg. water, wastewater, energy, waste, transportation, telecommunications), the provision of social services, or economic policies and marketing strategies. Students reflect on how a diversity of sectoral policies and planning systems shape urban development and how they relate to and interact with spatial planning.
Urban Governance in Spatial Planning
Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Utrecht University (from 2017)
This course focuses on theoretical perspectives on urban governance in spatial planning. It analyzes – in planning practice – the role of governance through case studies of (inter-)national complex spatial projects.
This course focuses on the nature and extent of urban development in the Global South with an emphasis on the social, political, economic and environmental challenges facing cities in developing countries. The context for understanding cities of the Global South is the fact that more than half the world’s population lives in cities, and much of the increase in urbanization is centred in cities of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The first part of the course will consider some of the historical trajectories that have shaped cities in the Global South, ideas about development and urbanization, and informality. The second part of the course shifts to focus on several issues shaping cities of the global South: housing, urban services and infrastructure, urban violence, etc. The final part of the course will consider how learning from the global south may present new approaches to dealing with urban challenges
The Changing Geographies of Latin America
The Changing Geographies of Latin America (GGR369), University of Toronto Mississauga (2012)
This course uses an interdisciplinary lens to examine the diverse geographies of Latin America. Part one focuses on the global scale to understand the region as a component of the neoliberal world order, and the challenges that have emerged from new actors. Part two shifts gears to the regional scale to examine the integration of the region in the form of trade agreements and political agreements. Part three focuses on the sub-national and local scales. This part of the course looks at a range of issues that have informed the geography of the region including agrarian change and land reform, local environmental issues, the question of urban informality, the rise of citizen participation as a strategy of governance, and municipal decentralization.