[lbo-talk] FW: Peace, Justice, and Planning: The Post-9/11 Urban Global Order

alex lantsberg wideye at earthlink.net
Tue Aug 19 12:48:40 PDT 2003


a course some of my classmates came up with as an outgrowth of our anti-war activities last semester. i'm sure they won't mind if non-students join in.

alex _______________________________________________________

Peace, Justice, and Planning: The Post-9/11 Urban Global Order

A Student-Initiated Course: Fall 2003 CP 298, 1 or 3 units Course Code #: 13609 Mondays, 6-9 pm, 314B Wurster Hall Department of City and Regional Planning, UC--Berkeley

Faculty Advisor: Prof. Ananya Roy Student Initiators: Heidi Hall, Steve Wertheim, Jonathan Mason, and Annie Decker

This course explores the global forces that interact at the urban scale. Its intention is to better understand our role as planners in a global world and as advocates for peace and justice. The focus of the seminar will be on engaging with some key debates around issues such as economic globalization, global social movements and reconstruction that are shaping the modern world today. Many now believe that a new geopolitical world order has arisen, a world order revealed and perhaps even strengthened by the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Also notable are the counter-reactions, such as the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization protests and recent anti-war demonstrations. City and regional planners, as well as geographers, designers, and others in related fields, directly engage with, counter, and sometimes act in concert with these global forces. Although many of the forces our class will explore were well in motion before 9/11, that date has become a key symbolic event. We ask the question of whether the world has really changed or whether only the public's perception of the world has changed. While this course is not about the events of 9/11 per se, the event provides a historical marker, a critical moment, a thematic unifier, one that both the Right and the Left have used as an explanatory device.

Goals of the Course:

* To provide planners with an understanding of global forces today and how they interact at various scales. * To evaluate the historic and current role of professional planning in these processes, and to provide planners with an understanding of leverage points for facilitating peace and justice. * To keep the themes of professional ethics in planning at the forefront of our classroom debates. * To institutionalize a planning-oriented examination of these important forces and sharpen planners' foreign policy analysis.

Readings:

Week 1 - August 25: Introduction

We will introduce the course syllabus, class organization, where to buy the course reader, and requirements. We also will discuss class projects, our target audiences for class projects, and student expectations. The use of 9/11 will be examined as a mechanism for approaching some of the key course issues.

[September 1: Labor Day Holiday] No class meeting.

Week 2 - September 8: Keywords: Peace, Justice & Globalization

This class session will introduce the central concepts to be examined throughout the course: What is peace? What is justice? What do we mean by globalization? What are the connections among these themes, and what is their relevance to our work as planners? This week is a keywording exercise meant not to achieve consensus but to reveal the tensions, contradictions, and genealogies of our common-place terms, especially those that lie at the core of this course: peace, justice and globalization. This keywording will spark discussion about the polarized interpretations of the current global order.

Week 3 - September 15: 9/11: Economic Globalization and Its Effects

This week will discuss the overarching concept of globalization and will devote attention to the contemporary moment of economic globalization. We will look specifically at neoliberalism and privatization-what are the implications for our cities, how do these forces play out in various contexts? We will introduce the question of how the 9/11 attacks related to this globalization process, keeping in mind that various scholars and commentators, as well as the public, have situated discussion around 9/11 within the context of economic globalization.

Week 4 - September 22: 9/11 and Urban Rebuilding

This week provides an opportunity to look at the politics of site-level planning and design, using 9/11 and the World Trade Center (WTC) site as a provocation to examine old and new planning themes. We will focus on competing publics and the role of planning in the rebuilding process. Who are the key players, how are decisions being made, who is the "public" being served? How have planners been involved in this process and how can planners ensure equitable outcomes in the face of a highly sensitive and political context? The WTC site example will be compared to past urban renewal efforts and current urban redevelopment processes.

Week 5 - September 29: 9/11: Clash of Fundamentalisms

This week will explore forms of fundamentalism before and after 9/11-from religious fundamentalism and market fundamentalism to related themes of empire and world order. Through readings and discussion we will explore some of the vigorous debates around the clash of civilizations and the clash of fundamentalisms. We also will examine links to international development and the role of planners in these larger processes.

Week 6 - October 6: Resource Economics

In this section, we ask what fuel is driving the 21st century global and local economies. Our readings make the connection between resource wars, resource extraction, and the major world players. How reliant is the U.S. economy on access to natural resources, especially oil, and how does this affect U.S. foreign policy? What role do planners play in resource economics? What are the environmental implications of these policy choices?

Week 7 - October 13: Post 9/11 Governance and Politics

This week we will explore various forms of governance-from the architecture of supranational institutions to the emergence of national surveillance regimes to various urban governance systems that involve religious identities (e.g., social Islam and faith-based organizations). Within this discussion, we will focus on the pressing question of civil liberties, democracy, and accountability. We will also raise the question of how terrorism is being used as a political tool. What are the policies of the Homeland Security department and what are the effects on people? What is the status of civil liberties in the United States?

Week 8 - October 20: Global Social Movements

Just as capitalism has globalized, so has social activism. In this week we look at Seattle (WTO) in 1999 and subsequent anti-globalization protests, and, in the context of 9/11, we contrast these two key global moments. Seattle has become a historical marker and also a major example of new contests over the control of urban space. We ask: How are communities of opposition formed and articulated in a global era? How has social activism become more global, and what are new methods of organizing and mobilizing (e.g., using the Internet and other technology)? In this week we link social movements at different scales to older social movements in planning and advocacy planning. Finally, we ask how planners work with these social movements today.

Week 9 - October 27: Carceral Geographies*: From the Military-Industrial Complex to the Control of Urban Space

This class examines the overlap of planning and security, focusing on the militarization of cities and the continued relationship of military and industrial forces. How has the fear of terrorism led to physical changes in our cities, how we use space, and how people interact? How have immigrant and foreign communities been targeted in the post-9/11 era? We will also consider the political economy and socioeconomic consequences of military expansion and will look at the implications for cities, communities, and military recruitment strategies. * A term borrowed from Ruth Gilmore's work.

Week 10 - November 3: Global Flows: Migrations, Displacements and Shifting Borders

This week will discuss global flows-of people, ideas, technology. Also prominent is the contrast between positive stories of global migration and entrepreneurship and stories about displacement, refugee movements, and homelessness. We will examine the role of planners in accommodating these global flows in terms of economics and social equity. The previous week's discussion will be continued through an examination of spatial strategies of control and containment.

Week 11 - November 10: Rebuilding Nations: Afghanistan and Iraq

In this examination of efforts to rebuild nations, we focus on Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan is a crucial case study, particularly in light of current reconstruction efforts in Iraq, testing the promise of reconstruction and U.S. intervention. In light of these case studies, we will explore the process of reconstruction and revisit the idea and ideology of development in relation to this process. Who is rebuilding and for whom? What is the vision? What role, if any, should the U.S. and the West play in rebuilding these nations? What professional roles do planners play in reconstruction and what ethical issues arise?

Week 12 - November 17: The Future of Planning

Against the background of the preceding weeks, we now ask: Where are we going next? What does the future hold for twenty-first-century geopolitics? How can we interweave concepts of peace and justice into our profession to work on social change? What can planners do to ensure a more equitable, livable urban future?

Week 13 - November 24: Final Presentations

Week 14 - December 1: Final Presentations

Week 15 - December 8: Final Class Discussion



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