SYLLABUS

Description | Required Texts and Assignments | Class Schedule | Grading | Course Policies

Description
This course looks at how the global economy shapes urban society through the examination of four themes:

1. Theories, facts and debates on globalization,


2. Globalization and history,


3. Cities within the modern global system, and


4. Detailed urban case studies focusing on changing economic, social and political structures in ‘globalizing cities.

Course prerequisites
English 1002 (C050) or equivalent, one GUS course or two social sciences courses or permission of the instructor. I assume that students can

(a) read social science materials,
(b) draw from a range of information sources,
(c) distinguish fact from interpretation,
(d) write short essays, and
(e) interpret maps, charts, graphs and other visual representations.

This course is designed to serve intermediate and advanced students who have taken at least one (preferably two) of the following courses GUS 060 or GUS 055 and GUS 050 or GUS 062. As the course is interdisciplinary by design, I encourage students with interests across the social sciences to take the course.

Course goals
This course introduces intermediate and upper division undergraduate students to the idea of globalization and how changes in the global economy affect cities around the world. We focus on urban society and ‘globalizing’ cities not just ‘global cities’ (New York, London, and Tokyo) or ‘megacities’ (cities of over 10 million). Students will increase their ability to read social science books and articles, draw from a range of information sources, write outlines, summaries, and reading responses, participate in discussions, make oral presentations, understand and use visual data and write a book review.

• Saskia Sassen, Cities in a World Economy, 3nd ed., Pine Forge Press, 2006



• Peter Marcuse and Ronal van Kempen, eds., Globalizing Cities: A New Spatial order?, Wiley-Blackwell, 2000

The texts are available at the bookstore or online. I have provided copies of all readings in electronic form on Blackboard. I recommend that you download or copy all materials and either save them on a CD or print them to guarantee access. You will be required to read between 75 to 100 pages per week, and I expect that you will need to go over the readings more than once. Early in the semester you will identify a book about a city or a specific urban issue to review.

Website
We use Blackboard extensively in this class. The site provides a forum to discuss the readings and topics raised in class. I will check the site periodically; and while I will sometimes respond to specific questions, you use the site to post outlines and discussion of readings and discuss issues raised by your peers. You will also post your book review and links to internet sites on the class website.

Expectations
You should expect to spend about 6 hours per week outside of class on reading and other assignments. I expect you to read and think about the texts before class, come to class on time, bring the readings to class and participate in class discussions. If you find it difficult to participate in class discussions, you may contribute to the discussion forums on blackboard. Attendance is mandatory, but you are allowed one unexcused absence per semester. If you miss a class, you may make up the absence by writing a 3 to 4 page review or discussion of the readings, which should be submitted within one week of the absence. If you miss multiple classes you must contact me by phone or email.

Assignments and evaluation
There are two exams: the first in class, the second a take-home essay exam. There are two short writing assignments: you will write one outline and one set of discussion notes for each article (we will use the later to guide class discussion) during the semester. Finally, you will select a book on a city or topic relevant to the course that interests you. During the final weeks of class you will present the work.

Grades will be determined in the following manner:

I provide students the opportunity to write a take home essay exam of ten to twelve pages in lieu of the in class exam. (If you know in advance that you will miss the exam let me know.) In accordance with Temple University policy, incompletes are given only in case of illness or other documented emergency. If you have any questions about how you are doing during the semester please ask.

Part I: Introduction: Globalization, Cities and Urban Systems

In this section of the course we provide the background for the broader debates on how the changing global economy is changing urban societies around the world.

Week 1, January 22 and 24. Globalization, facts, theories, and debates

As the course focuses on the intersection of the global economy and urban society, we begin with a discussion of globalization. What are we talking about when we discuss globalization? Is it strictly the spread of market (neoliberal) economics across the globe? Proponents of globalization argue that ‘free’ markets will bring progress, democracy and better standards of living to the world’s poor. Has this proven to be true?

J. A. Scholte, ‘What is Happening?’ in Globalization: A Critical Introduction, pp. 8-9 and 13-40, St. Martin's Press, 2000.

T. Friedman, Chapter 2, in Lexus and the Olive Tree, pp. 25-37, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1999.

Economist: Globalisation, excerpts, 2000.

H. V. Savitch, "What is new about globalization and what does it portend for cities?", pp. 179-189 in International Social Science Journal 54:172, 2002.

Video: John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World

Assignment: sign up for article outline, discussion and presentation before January 29.

Week 2, January 29 and 31. Cities and urban systems

Cities do not function as isolated units but are integrated, to a greater or lesser degree, into a single interdependent global urban system. No single event or factor determines the fate of a city, but instead the combination of geographic, historical, political, environmental and social elements interact with the actions of individual actors to shape (and reshape) cities. The first reading serves to locate the general discussion within a single family to reinforce the point that the processes we are considering eventually affect individual agents; the next describes the global distribution of urban populations; and the last two illustrate different approaches to thinking about cities.

L. Jellinek, "Displaced by Modernity: The Saga of a Jakarta Street-Trader’s Family from the 1940s to the 1990s", pp. 139-155, in Josef Gugler, ed., Cities in the Developing World, 2nd ed., Oxford U. Press, 1997.

D. Clark, "Urban Populations and Places", pp. 18-47, in Urban World, Global City, 2nd ed., Routledge, 2003.

L. Mumford, "What is a City?", reproduced in Legates, The City Reader, 1st ed., Routledge, 1996.

D. Harvey, "Contested Cities: Social process and spatial form", pp. 19-27, in N. Jewson and S. McGregor, eds., Transforming Cities: Contested Governance and New Spatial Divisions, Routledge, 1997.

Optional:
A. Portes, J. Itzigsohn, and C. Dore-Cabral, "Urbanization in the Caribbean Basin: Social Change during the Years of the Crisis", pp. 16-54, in The Urban Caribbean: Transition to the New Global Economy, Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1997.

Videos: City Life and Jakarta

Week 3, February 5 and 7. Cities in History

While changing economic, technological and political relations have rapidly increased the pace of globalization in the past 50 years, we note that even before the current ‘global’ era cities served as administrative centers of empires, and sites of trade, and in the industrial age, the point at which natural resources were transformed into manufactured goods. The chapter by Chakravorty demonstrates incomplete transformation resulting from globalization in a megacity.

Jacques Gernet, "Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion: 1250-1276", in J. Abu-Lughod and R. Hay, Jr., eds. Third World Urbanization, Maaroufa Press, 1977.

B. Roberts, "Urbanization and Underdevelopment before the Modern Period", pp 28-54, in The Making of Citizens: Cities of peasants revisited, Halsted Press, 1995.

W. Cronon, "Dreaming the Metropolis", pp. 23-54, in Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, Norton, 1991.

S. Chakravorty, "Calcutta, From Colonial City to Globalizing City? The Far-from-complete Spatial Transformation of Calcutta", pp. 56-77, in Globalizing Cities: Is There a New Spatial Order? 1999 (Marcuse and van Kempen).

Class discussion of books for review.

Assignment: Select a book to review, post title and description to Blackboard by 2/21 (week 5). You may not review a book used in another class. Please see me if you are not sure if the book is appropriate.

Part II. Urban Systems

In this part of the course we examine how the changing global economy changes urban societies.

Week 4, February 12 and 14. Urban systems and the World City Hypothesis

With our initial understanding of urban processes, we can begin to examine how globalization has changed urban systems: in this case we are referring to systems of cities. Historically, scholars have considered this question within a national context, for example, how cities assume specific roles within a national system of cities. With the rapid expansion of the global economy, urban scholars began to think about systems of cities within global, as well as national, networks. The readings by Friedmann and Sassen are typical of these approaches. Potter and Lloyd-Evans describe how national urban systems have changed with globalization. We change focus with the last reading by Marcuse and van Kempen that allows us to begin to examine how globalization has changed the ‘spatial order’ of cities.

J. Friedmann, "The World City Hypothesis, Development and Change", pp. 69-83, Development and Change, 17: 1, January, 1986.

S. Sassen, Ch. 1, "Place and Production in the Global Economy", and Ch. 2, "The Urban Impact of Economic Globalization", in Cities in a World Economy, 2000 (Sassen).

R. Potter and S. Lloyd-Evans, Ch. 3, "National Urban Systems and Global Development", pp. 51-73 in The City in the Developing World, Prentice-Hall, 1998.

P. Marcuse and R. van Kempen, eds. "Introduction", pp.1-21, in Marcuse and van Kempen.

Week 5, February 19 and 21. New (and Old) International Division of Labor and Migration

Economic globalization has brought about a change in the international division of labor. The (traditional) international division of labor (IDL) refers to the set of processes by which ‘core’ industrial nations like England, Germany, France, the United States, and Japan imported raw materials, transformed them through industrial processes and exported manufactured goods back to the ‘developing’ or ‘third world’. These economic and industrial processes, of course, affected the urban structure of cities. The reading by Frobel relates the change from the IDL to the New IDL (NIDL). The NIDL also brought with it new demands for labor in both rich and poor countries, with resulting changes in patterns of migration as Castles and Miller show. The economic changes also contributed to changing urban structures, as in the case of Singapore, a ‘winner’ in the process of global restructuring.

F. Frobel, "Introduction", pp. 1-44, in Folker Frobel, Jurgen Heinrichs, and Otto Kreye, The New International Division of Labor, Cambridge U. Press, 1980-81.

Sassen, Ch. 3, "National and Transnational Urban Systems".

S. Castles and M. Miller, "The Next Waves: The Globalisation of International Migration", pp. 122-53, in Castles & Miller, The Age of Migration, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

L. van Grunsven, "Singapore: the changing residential landscape in a winner city", pp. 95-126, in Marcuse and van Kempen.

Video: Selections from La Ciudad, Shanghai (TBA)

Assignment: Book reviews and oral presentations: in class presentations begin week 12. A draft of the written report should be posted to Blackboard within one week of the oral presentation.

Week 6, February 26 and 28. New Urban Economies and review for exam

Changes from a Fordist to a post-Fordist global economy, are, of course, not only rooted in technological advances and changes in markets, but also in physical places and the daily lives of real people. Sassen sets the stage for understanding these events, and Garson tries to connect abstract global financial circuits and real people. Goldsmith turns the usual argument around suggesting that US urban structure, in fact, has contributed not only to changes in the global economy, but will also contribute to changes in the urban structure of cities around the world.

Sassen, Ch. 4, "The New Urban Economy: The Intersection of Global Processes and Place".

B. Garson, "Looking for Loans in All the Wrong Places", pp. 41-65, in Money Makes the World Go Around: One investor tracks her cash through the Global Economy, Viking, 2001.

W. Goldsmith, "From the Metropolis to Globalization: The Dialectics of Race and Urban Form", pp. 37-55 in Marcuse and van Kempen.

Week 7, March 4 and 6. Exam (March 4)
Exam one, Tuesday

March 4. Thursday.

Video TBA, Beijing Bicycle or from China series.

Spring Break March 11 and 13

Part III. Cities and processes in the global system.

Week 8, March 18 and 20. Midcourse evaluation and case studies: Miami, Singapore and Rio de Janeiro

In the changing global economy some cities, like Miami or Singapore, and more specifically, groups of people within them, are increasingly successful. But not everyone shares in the success as industrial jobs are limited and globalization, as shown in the case of Rio de Janeiro, brings increased inequality.

Sassen, Chapter 5, "Issues and Case Studies in the New Urban Economy".

R. Grosfoguel, "Global logics in the Caribbean city system: the case of Miami", pp. 156-170, in P. Knox and P. J. Taylor, World Cities in a World-System, 1995.

B. Badcock, "The Imprint of the Post-Fordist Transition on Australian Cities", pp. 211-227, in Marcuse and van Kempen.

L. C. de Querioz Ribeiro and E. Telles, "Rio de Janeiro: Emerging Dualization in a Historically Unequal City", pp. 78-94, in Marcuse and van Kempen.

Video: Bus 174

Week 9, March 25 and 27. Inequality and Neoliberalism

Sassen argues that globalization brings with it new forms of inequality and social exclusion. Friedmann shows how inequality is produced in China. The reading on neoliberalism provides the foundation to understand an alternative explanation of how cities are changing in the global economy. While we will return to the theme of neoliberalism repeatedly in coming weeks, Wacquant’s article provides a striking example of one manifestation of the neoliberal turn in global economic policy has affected domestic politics to give rise to the criminalization of poverty.

Sassen, Ch. 6, "The New Inequalities within Cities".

John Friedmann, "2005, New Spatial Inequalities", pp. 55-70 in China’s Urban Transition, , U. of Minnesota Press, 2005.

R. Peet, "Globalism and neoliberalism", in Unholy trinity : the IMF, World Bank and WTO, Zed Books, 2003.

L. Wacquant, "The Penalisation of Poverty and the Rise of Neo-liberalism", pp. 401-12, in European Journal of Criminal Policy and Research, 9:4 December, 2001.

Optional:
B. Kohl and L. Farthing, "Neoliberal Globalization: The challenge of maintaining hegemony", pp. 11-33, in Impasse in Bolivia: Neoliberal Hegemony and Popular Resistance, Zed Books, 2006.

Week 10, April 1 and 3. Cities and space: alternative explanations

This week we finish Sassen and read two articles that identify problems with her hypothesis and a third that proposes a competing theory suggesting that neoliberalism may be a more useful concept for understanding changes in global urban structure.

Sassen, Ch. 7, "Global Cities and Global Survival Circuits".

Sassen, Ch 8, "A New Geography of Centers and Margins: Summary and Implications".

R. Beauregard and A. Haila, "The Unavoidable Continuities of the City", pp, 22-36 in Marcuse and van Kempen.

P. Marcuse and R. van Kempen, "Conclusion: A Changed Spatial Order", pp. 249-275.

Kohl, Draft MS. "The neoliberal city hypothesis".

Week 11, April 8 and 10. Neoliberal cities

Economic globalization is, to a great extent, synonymous with neoliberal globalization or, more simply, neoliberalism. Sandercock and Pryke show how neoliberalism affects urban life. Portes and Roberts show the impacts on a regional level while, in their portrait of La Paz, Farthing, Arbona, and Kohl suggest that neoliberalism may generate its own particular urban form. Nevins illustrates one dimension of the neoliberal turn, represented in the economic dependence on workers who lack the basic social and legal protections of citizens.

L. Sandercock, "Introduction to special feature: Neoliberalism and the urban condition", City, 9(1)101-107, 2005.

M. Pryke, "City rhythms: neo-liberalism and the developing world", pp. 230-268, in J. Allen, D. Massey and M. Pryke, Unsettling Cities, Routledge, 1999.

B. Roberts and Portes, "The free-market city: Latin American urbanization in the years of the neoliberal experiment", Studies in Comparative International Development, 40(1), 2005.

J. Nevins, "Third World and ‘Illegal’ In the City of Angels", pp. 97-116, in D N Sawney, Unmasking LA: Third Worlds and the City, Palgrave-MacMillan, 2002.

L. Farthing, J. Arbona and B. Kohl, "The Cities that Neoliberalism Built: Exploring Urbanization in La Paz-El Alto", Harvard International Review, web edition, available at http://hir.harvard.edu/articles/1433/, May 2006.

Optional:
N. Brenner & N. Theodore, Cities and the Geographies of "Actually Existing Neoliberalism", Antipode 34 (3), 349–379, 2002.

J. R. Hackworth, The neoliberal city: governance, ideology, and development in American urbanism, 2007.

During this section of the course you will present oral reviews of the books you have read and relate them to the readings we have done during the semester. As we will not all be able to read every book that is being reviewed, you will also need to identify a reading to complement your oral review, which you will post, along with your written review on Blackboard, at least five days before your scheduled presentation.

Week 12, April 15 and 17. Presentations and special topics TBA

Joel Bowman and Bernadine Branchaw, "Oral Presentations", pp. 171-85, in How to Write Proposals That Produce, Oryx Press, 1992.

Week 13, April 22 and 24. Presentations and special topic TBA

Week 14, April 28 and May 1. Presentations and wrapping up

Assignment: Take home final, due May 8.

May 1 last day of class
All work due May 8, 2:40 PM. Late work will be penalized by one full grade per day.

Additional information on course policies

Religious Holidays
If you will be observing any religious holidays this semester which will prevent you from attending a regularly scheduled class or interfere with fulfilling any course requirement, I will offer you an opportunity to make up the class or course requirement if you make arrangements by informing me of the dates of your religious holidays within two weeks of the beginning of the semester (or three days before any holidays which fall within the first two weeks of class).

Cell Phones
Cell phones, pagers and beepers must be turned off during class except with special permission.

Disabilities
This course is open to all students who meet the academic requirements for participation. Any student who has a need for accommodation based on the impact of a disability should contact me privately to discuss the specific situation as soon as possible. Contact Disability Resources and Services at 215-204-1280 in 100 Ritter Annex to coordinate reasonable accommodations for students with documented disabilities.

Academic Freedom
Freedom to teach and freedom to learn are inseparable facets of academic freedom. The University has adopted a policy on Student and Faculty Academic Rights and Responsibilities (Policy # 03.70.02) which can be accessed through the following link: http://policies.temple.edu/getdoc.asp?policy_no=03.70.02.

Academic Honesty
The following text is from the Temple University Bulletin for 2006-2007:

Temple University believes strongly in academic honesty and integrity. Plagiarism and academic cheating are, therefore, prohibited. Essential to intellectual growth is the development of independent thought and a respect for the thoughts of others. The prohibition against plagiarism and cheating is intended to foster this independence and respect.

Plagiarism is the unacknowledged use of another person's labor, another person's ideas, another person's words, or another person's assistance. Normally, all work done for courses -- papers, examinations, homework exercises, laboratory reports, oral presentations -- is expected to be the individual effort of the student presenting the work. Any assistance must be reported to the instructor. If the work has entailed consulting other resources -- journals, books, or other media -- these resources must be cited in a manner appropriate to the course. It is the instructor's responsibility to indicate the appropriate manner of citation. Everything used from other sources -- suggestions for organization of ideas, ideas themselves, or actual language -- must be cited. Failure to cite borrowed material constitutes plagiarism. Undocumented use of materials from the World Wide Web is plagiarism.

Academic cheating is, generally, the thwarting or breaking of the general rules of academic work or the specific rules of the individual courses. It includes falsifying data; submitting, without the instructor's approval, work in one course which was done for another; helping others to plagiarize or cheat from one's own or another's work; or actually doing the work of another person.