| Unit name | City Futures: Migration, Citizenship, and Planetary Change |
|---|---|
| Unit code | UNIV10005 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | C/4 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Professor. King |
| Open unit status | Open |
| Units you must take before you take this one (pre-requisite units) |
None |
| Units you must take alongside this one (co-requisite units) |
None |
| Units you may not take alongside this one |
N/A |
| School/department | School of Modern Languages |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
A trailer is available for this unit here and social media shorts here
This interdisciplinary unit explores a series of questions: How urban spaces shape our ideas of citizenship and belonging? How a rapidly changing planet is shifting our conceptions of what constitutes a city? How we construct cities, who lives in them, how we define their boundaries, as well how we imagine cities and our relationship as a species to them? We will interrogate how the structural dynamics of cities both produce social and economic displacement, but also act as spaces of refuge for immigrants of all kinds, creating a continually shifting terrain of extra-political belonging.
City-spaces are also some of the most notoriously polluted and polluting infrastructural configurations on the planet, while ‘smart cities’, vertical forests, ‘cybercities’ and green-tech hubs are offering some of the most progressive solutions to urban living today. We will consider how cities are both contributing and responding to global climate change, and what this means for how people live in and imagine life in urban spaces. Looking at both specific instances of regional migrations to cities, but also at global trends in migration to urban spaces over the last two hundred years, the unit offers students the chance to consider different narratives of human life in the modern era through the lens of urban space.
The unit will bring together a range of materials, from policy reports on urban planning, and migration, as well as environmental and geological studies on human induced climate change, to science fiction, cli-fi (climate fiction) and city-writing, in order to consider how cities are located at the centre of our shifting theories – both scientific and creative – about what it means to belong to and belong on a changing planet.
Teaching will be delivered through a combination of synchronous sessions and asynchronous activities, including seminars, lectures, and collaborative as well as self-directed learning opportunities supported by tutor consultation. You will also be asked to complete a 500-word reflective essay for which you will be given formative tutor feedback.’
Summative task
1 x 2000-word essay (50%). [ILOs 1-5].
1 x group video presentation (5-10 minutes) (50%) to be uploaded to course website [ILOs 1-6].
Videos will be displayed as part of a one-day mini-conference at the end of the course. Students will present their video-projects, speak to audience about the making of these, as well as review their peers' projects.
If this unit has a Resource List, you will normally find a link to it in the Blackboard area for the unit. Sometimes there will be a separate link for each weekly topic.
If you are unable to access a list through Blackboard, you can also find it via the Resource Lists homepage. Search for the list by the unit name or code (e.g. UNIV10005).
How much time the unit requires
Each credit equates to 10 hours of total student input. For example a 20 credit unit will take you 200 hours
of study to complete. Your total learning time is made up of contact time, directed learning tasks,
independent learning and assessment activity.
See the Faculty workload statement relating to this unit for more information.
Assessment
The Board of Examiners will consider all cases where students have failed or not completed the assessments required for credit.
The Board considers each student's outcomes across all the units which contribute to each year's programme of study. If you have self-certificated your absence from an
assessment, you will normally be required to complete it the next time it runs (this is usually in the next assessment period).
The Board of Examiners will take into account any extenuating circumstances and operates
within the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes.
