Delft University of Technology

• Alternative theories in spatial justice, housing provision and management, and urban resilience.
• Application of analytical tools and innovative solutions to contemporary urban challenges
• Develop a critical perspective about your own urban environment.
• New perspectives to understand and analyze the urban challenges of the global south.

This course is an instructor-paced course, structured in three modules. During the seven weeks, students can explore the different modules according to their own plan. The course is then structured as follows:

Week 1: Introduction
General introduction and course structure. Plan your course and your ‘critical thinking’ assignment, where you will have to upload a picture identifying the urban challenge you think it is most important to your city.

Week 2 to week 4: Modules
The three modules are presented following the same steps:

• First: Introducing the theory by providing a contemporary perspective of the urban topic and main concepts.
• Second: Applying the theory by presenting three case studies.
• Third: Challenging the theory by presenting the experience of a practitioner in each field.

The three modules are:

1. Spatial Justice. This part of the course aims to analyze concrete cases of spatial justice and injustice in emerging economies and how contemporary theories apply there. It seeks to shift the attention given in the last few years to issues of spatial justice in the Global North, to issues of spatial justice in the booming metropolises of the South, where spatial fragmentation and inequality are extreme.
2. Housing Provision and Management. This section will review the opportunities for alternative approaches in housing provision and management in the context of China, Ghana and Chile. Some topics of interest are social innovation in housing, collaborative housing approaches, community self-organization and the role of the third sector in housing policies.
3. Urban Resilience. One can say that communities on the emerging world are more resilient, since they face more complex social, economic and environmental challenges than the Global North. Nevertheless, it is imperative to go beyond that simplistic idea of struggling for survival. Emerging economies offer a fertile ground to conduct research on how to use these complex threats as an opportunity to build better urban environments. These section of the course will shed some light on case studies of resilience that applies alternative approaches on the topic.

Week 5 and 6: Final assignment
The final assignment is aimed at developing a critical approach towards the issues, theories and contexts presented during the course.

Rethink the City Prize - Selection criteria:
- participation on the forum
- quality of the practical assignments
- originality and critical perspective of the final assignment
- motivation letter