GEOG30W7: Re-Thinking Urban Natures

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• By focusing on the implications of the Anthropocene for cities, this module seeks to critically assess how contemporary processes of climate change and ecological emergency shape urban environments. The module starts from the premise that, within urban geography, to make sense of the Anthropocene we need to start by unpacking the relationship between city and natureboth in academic and practitioner contexts. In doing this, it looks at how urban environments encounter the challenges of the Anthropocene, and how cities responses are in turn shaped by how we understand urban natures.
• Students who enjoyed L2 Urban Geography, L2 Climate Change: Geographical Perspectives, and L1 Geographies of Crisis will have the opportunity to deepen their studies on the links between climate change, ecological crisis, and societal processes.

• The module will cover a range of debates around the relationship between cities and the contemporary ecological and climate emergency, as well as the place of the city in the historic making and future imaginaries of the Anthropocene. Overall, the module will unpack how we understand the citynature relationship in the context of the Anthropocene through topics such as:
• Nature, infrastructure, and modernity
• Nature in the Anthropocene city
• Urban sustainability: from the resilient city to nature-based solutions
• New climate urbanisms
• Urban ecology / Urban political ecology
• Nature and the more-than-human city
• Urban natures and the post-colonial
• Digital urban natures

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Understand foundational theoretical texts on the citynature relationship.
• Critically assess how contemporary processes of climate change and ecological emergency shape urban environments.
• Critically engage with the development of alternative understandings of the citynature relationship that are better suited towards responding to the challenges of the Anthropocene.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Critically engage with a range of debates on urban sustainability.
• Identify practical and conceptual pathways towards enhancing sustainability in urban environments.
• Identify practitioner communities and organizations working on urban sustainability across the world.

Key Skills:

• Assess the merits of contrasting theories, explanations and policies.
• Identify pathways for mobilising theoretical debates within professional practice.

• The module will be delivered through a series of weekly lectures, along with two workshops. Each lecture will end with a short discussion of practitioner organizations working on the respective topic.
• Summative assessment (essay) will require students to give a creative and critical account of contemporary forms of urban natures, considering how the citynature relationship both responds to and is being transformed by climate change and the ecological emergency. Students will develop their arguments through an in-depth engagement with one case study of their choice, focusing exclusively on a city or specific project or process within a city. This five-page essay on re-thinking urban natures will integrate material from across at least two of the lectures with material (e.g. news stories, project briefs, planning documents, architectural plans, advertisements, grey literature, etc.) gathered from via a web-based desktop review. A long list of potential case studies will be provided in advance, but students are welcome to select a case study of their own choice outside of this list.

The second workshop, towards the end of the module, will be a formative workshop on an essay plan. Students will be asked to prepare in advance an essay plan (case study, essay question, and preliminary supporting literatures). They will share their ideas during the workshop. Oral formative feedbackboth by the lecturer and by peerswill be provided during the workshop with the aim of supporting students in developing their ideas towards the summative essay.

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