Despite repeated attempts to understand the nature of recent urbanisms, there remains a wide spectrum of positions, particularly in contemporary critical urban theories. In this context, in order to question the post-industrial era’s ever-changing spatial qualities, man-made and natural respectively, this course focuses on some of the faculties of critical urban theories and explores their motives. The course will also question:

• Changing characters of mode of production and their spatial implications, geographical to urban, in terms of Marxist economy-politics,
• Attitudes in modes of distribution, re-distribution, and consumption; and roles of urban spaces as political settings of such spatial re-configurations,
• Future of urban spaces in relation to such themes as resistance, anti-capitalist urbanisms, etc.  

Viewed from the perspective of critical urban theories, this course is specifically designed to problematize urban existence in relation to Marxist economy-politics. It is important to note that critical urban theories also call for a mode of inquiry, neither reductionist nor negative in nature, and primarily locate the issue of power in spatial analyses. Structured parallel to Arch 526 Politics and Space, in this respect, the principal objective of this course is to develop a framework directly related to cities and examine how and to what extent urban operations, understood as both the objects and the instruments of power, are liable and effective in contemporary structures, both social and spatial.