Winter 2025 Course on Cities & Urban Democracy

MSW students, please consider this 5-credit Winter 2025 course for your Out-Of-Department Electives.

The Right to the City and Urban Democracy 
URBDP 598 I, SLN: 22062, 5 credits (graduate section)

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:30 – 5:20 PM, JHN 111

Instructor: Prof. Mark Purcell, mpurcell@uw.edu   

Short Description: More than half of the human population now lives in cities.  People depend on cities for vital needs like employment, housing, transportation, public services, and public space.  But who controls the city?  Who makes the decisions that shape it?  And who should make those decisions?  The right to the city is a radical idea that argues that it is a city’s inhabitants that should control the city.  Not the market.  Not the government.  But the people who inhabit and depend on the city.  As such, the right to the city can be seen as a proposal for a radical urban democracy.  This course critically examines the right to the city.  We will study both the theory behind it and the many concrete initiatives people have pursued to make it a reality.  Examples of such initiatives include neighborhood councils, shack dwellers’ movements, the occupy movement, tenants’ unions, guerrilla/tactical urbanism, attempts to “common” urban land, anti-eviction campaigns, autonomous zones (such as the CHAZ), and so on. 

Relevant Fields: Urban Planning and Built Environments fields, Public Administration and Policy, History, and Political Science.

Comments