MARCH680 GE:Social Theory/Spatial Pol

Spaces in urban environments, as they are and as they become created, inherently are the sites or even the basis of struggles to define the city and life within it: who and what space is for. One could argue that those who live in the city, construct personal identities reacting to their own perceptions of lived space, or out of dissatisfaction with their understanding of what space is. People voluntarily or involuntarily produce their own critique of space, eventually looping back, often through difficult oppositions, into the making of new everyday spaces. This course will examine different theories about the production of space. One objective is to introduce students to the epistemological and "ontological" bases of spatial ideas while discovering the ways in which individual, collective and lived realities collide and combine. Space theories will be located within a broader spectrum of current discourses including those defining sustainable architecture, gentrification, the grassroots, monuments and landscape urbanism.