Cancelled GUS, Global Urban Studies: Copenhagen and a World of Cities (F23)

This introduction to urban humanities uses Copenhagen – its modern history, its spaces, its cultures – as a window through which to explore the global processes, structures and phenomena that characterize urban life in the 21^st Century.

In close collaboration with a major Danish architectural and urban planning firm, the course employs urban theory, ethnography, textual analysis and global urban history on topics such as gentrification, co-existence and segregation, (post-)Fordism and neoliberalism, place making, colonial legacies, creative city discourses, ‘export’ of ‘the idea of Copenhagen’ around the world, etc.

The overall question for the course is this: in a world that is both globalized and urbanized, how can we study a supposedly typical Danish or Nordic city in a global (and thus non-Eurocentric) fashion? As such, the course will foster a critical awareness of the interrelations between cultural imaginaries, material conditions and the built environment.

The course is offered through the Global Urban Studies Master’s Elective (urban.tors.ku.dk) and is open to all BA- and MA-level students who will be awarded 15 ECTS upon passing the exam.