SO477 Half Unit
Urban Social Theory
This information is for the 2025/26 session.
Course Convenor
Dr David Madden
Availability
This course is available on the MSc in City Design and Social Science, MSc in Culture and Society, MSc in International Migration and Public Policy (LSE and Sciences Po) and MSc in Sociology. This course is freely available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. It does not require permission. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process.
This course has a limited number of places (it is controlled access). Places are allocated based on a written statement. Priority will be given to students on the MSc in City Design and Social Science, for whom the course is an 'optional core course'.
How to apply: For information on how to apply for a place on this course, including deadlines, please see Courses offered and related information.
Course content
This course is an introduction to urban social theory. The class will focus on major concepts, paradigms, texts and thinkers in order to critically assess different ways of theorising the urban. It will analyse various forms of urban theory including political economy, human ecology, feminism and postcolonialism, which are used as lenses through which to understand a variety of topics, such as socio-spatial restructuring, neoliberalisation, the politics of public space, globalisation, cosmopolitanism, the urbanisation of patriarchy, the racialisation of urban space, the right to the city and planetary urbanisation.
Teaching
This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.
This course is usually delivered through seminars. There will be two hours or more of teaching each week in AT.
Formative assessment
Essay
Students will be expected to produce one essay in the AT.
Indicative reading
Engels, Friedrich. 1887 [1872]. The Housing Question. London: Cooperative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers.
Du Bois, W.E.B. 1899. The Philadelphia Negro: A social study. Publications of the University of Pennsylvania.
Park, Robert E., Ernest W. Burgess and Roderick D. McKenzie. 1967 (1925). The City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Castells, Manuel. 1977. The Urban Question. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991 [1974]. The Production of Space. Donald Nicholson-Smith, trans. Oxford: Blackwell.
Butler, Judith. 2015. “Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street.” Pp 66-98 in Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Young, Iris Marion. 2011 [1990]. “City Life and Difference.” Pp 226-256 in Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kohn, Margaret. 2004. Brave New Neighborhoods: The privatization of public space. London: Routledge.
Danewid, Ida. 2020. “The Fire This Time: Grenfell, racial capitalism and the urbanisation of empire." European Journal of International Relations 26 (1): 289-313.
Simone, AbdouMaliq. 2016. “Urbanity and Generic Blackness.” Theory, Culture & Society 33 (7-8): 183-203.
Wacquant, Loïc. 2007. “Territorial Stigmatization in the Age of Advanced Marginality.” Thesis Eleven 91: 66-77.
Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2007. The Creation of the World or Globalization. François Raffoul and David Pettigrew, trans. SUNY Press.
Brenner, Neil. 2013. “Theses on Urbanization.” Public Culture 25 (1): 85-114.
Assessment
Memo (10%) weekly
Essay (90%, 5000 words) in January
There will be weekly memos submitted via Moodle the evening before each class session during the AT.
Attendance at all classes and submission of all set coursework is required.
Key facts
Department: Sociology
Course Study Period: Autumn Term
Unit value: Half unit
FHEQ Level: Level 7
CEFR Level: Null
Total students 2024/25: 29
Average class size 2024/25: 29
Controlled access 2024/25: YesCourse selection videos
Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.
Personal development skills
- Self-management
- Problem solving
- Application of information skills
- Communication
- Specialist skills