City: Growth, Ideology, Power and Violence - Seminar

lecture

English

In the lecture I have presented a theoretical framework, content and methodological format of a newly established seminar on modern history and theory of urbanism at the Faculty of Architecture, Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic. The paper deals with our concrete experience as educators and creators of the conception and teaching methods of the seminar. First objective of the seminar titled City: Growth, Ideologies, Power and Violence was to acquaint students with the theory of our field. This implies relations between cities and technology, economy, politics and culture, various approaches to urban planning, ideologies, urban growth and problems of cities since the first Industrial Revolution until today. Reflecting the interdisciplinary discourse, we have welcomed lectures and discussions with professionals from external urban studies fields. Students themselves were asked to read, understand, graphically represent to others and in the end rewrite theoretical texts by experts of different backgrounds, all dealing with cities: sociology, economics, geography, philosophy, urban anthropology or cultural ethnography. The course content was divided into three blocks. The first one, called Growth, addressed analyzing the development of the city in terms of current theories. The second one, Ideologies, summarized important approaches to urban planning, understood as a response to stimuli coming from the period discussed in the first block. The third block, Power and Violence, outlined the city as a medium and space for exercise of power. Apart from our effort to deliver this specially tailored content to our students, we have also devised specific ways of teaching in order to improve students ability to use critical theory as an essential part of their future work – our second main objective. In that respect, we have introduced a participative method involving students actively in the course of each lesson, in order to help them find their own beliefs and ways of thinking, rather than offering them ready-made interpretations and instant arguments. In a broader sense, we have tackled a question what role should we play as educators in such a complex field with so many elusive factors that architecture and urban planning stands for.

seminar; teaching theory; critical thinking; ideology; city

BŘEZOVSKÁ, M.

11. 7. 2012

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