This module focuses on modern city theories. The sustainability of our economies depends on ensuring the prosperity of all in a city, community, and nation. In this module, you will explore modernization theories on cities through a focus on three strands of theories, namely, the British Utopias, Chicago School of Urban Ecology Theories, and Marxist theories on cities.

This module introduces you to social and ecological urbanization. In this module, you will explore how the rise of identity and middle-class politics since the mid-seventies, together with the environmental and ecological crisis confronting humankind, generated new questions about urban social relations and shifted the theorization of nature and the city.

Urban theories assume that all cities follow a similar development trajectory, and Western cities are considered archetypes. In this module, you will explore critically urban forms in post-colonial cities and in this light, their dual structure. Firstly, you will be introduced to the binary lens, namely, formal vs. informal and legal vs. illegal, in vogue to understand the cities of the Global South. Further, you will explore different conceptions of informal—as a sector, as a relationship, and as a process. You will understand the relationship between the formal and the informal. Lastly, you will explore how this duality (formal and informal) manifests in land, housing, and infrastructure.

This module introduces you to the history of urban governments in the European Context and its introduction in the Asian, Latin American, and African contexts until the decade of nineties, prior to the globalization era. You will explore the institutional arrangement and the differences between cities in the role and powers of urban local government with respect to the master plan. You will also learn about the State–society’s relationship and social housing.

In this module, you will explore the impact of globalization on city spaces. You will learn the theories on globalization, particularly those of World Cities, Global Cities, Transnational Urbanism, and Worlding Cities. You will explore how globalization impacted cities using the lens of accumulation by dispossession, speculative urbanism, and gentrification.

In this module, you will explore urban governance issues and will engage with emerging issues such as deliberative democracy, e-governance, data governance, and new private actors (consultants and financial institutions, credit agencies) in shaping urban policy decisions and new laws to support the changes.