For nearly a millennium
of western history, cities have been seen as half of a city- country
opposition, where urban centers were figured either as a sources of
enlightenment and sophistication, or as havens for corruption and disease.
More recently this dichotomy has been overshadowed by the metropolitan
sprawl which houses the vast majority of citizens in America as well
as those of other nations. This shift from country to city is complicated
by the rapid change in economic function of cities in the years after
WWII in the US and, again, at the end of the century. As trucks replaced
railroads for transporting goods in the post-war period, a new type
of urban space –the suburb- was born, leaving the outdated industrial
centers to minorities and immigrants and to large-scale unemployment.
Several decades later, yet another period of urban mutation followed
upon the flight of the 1960’s as returning middle class populations
and occupations reinvigorated the moribund metropolitan centers.
An increasing body of urban scholarship focuses on the suburbanization
of American cities as a potentially beneficial cultural shift. In opposition
to trends in urban planning that see suburbs as symptomatic of urban
sprawl and industrial blight, some scholars now question whether we
need cities at all. Suburbs, or “edge cities”, now provide
housing, amenities and jobs to a large proportion of American city-dwellers.
Can the suburb be understood as a new kind of city, one organized around
streets, parking lots, malls and corporate campuses?
Other scholars argue that cities persist as the only continuing locus
of social re-invention and vitality. Metropolitan centers most recently
have provided new centers for global financial markets capable of wielding
enormous influence over government at all levels and of mobilizing new
wealth and occupations for new collectivities of workers. These global
capital markets are also capable of supporting virtual networks which
reinforce the economic hegemony of cities and thereby pose a challenge
to the traditional functioning of liberal democracies.
This seminar brings together different voices from the forefront of
contemporary urban studies. Speakers will examine the history of the
European city, the role of religion and spirituality in urban communities,
the relationship between globalization and urbanization, the effect
of the internet on the city, and the role of the suburbs in our definition
of urban space. Questions related to the changing role of cities will
be at the forefront of the discussion: How do we define the city in
the twenty-first century? Do we see the city as a source of cultural
sophistication, or of strife and injustice? Are cities determined by
their geo-cultural location, or are cities now much the same internationally?
And, finally, do we need cities at all?
Speakers include sociologists, Terrence Clark, Omar McRoberts, Saskia
Sassen, Richard Taub and historian Constantin Fasolt,
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