MSc Environmental Impact Assessment & Management / Course details

This module aims to:

• Explore the principles, nature and practice of planning systems and processes around the world
• Critically evaluate different approaches to planning and development
• Demonstrate an appreciation of such approaches
• Understand emerging future trends in urban development in global cities
• Examine the notion of the future ‘smart’ city in a global context

The module will examine how cities are developing around the world in what we call the ‘urban age’. Each day there are an estimated 193,107 new urban dwellers (UN-Habitat 2009). This is equivalent to a city larger than the size of Dallas every week, the population of Rio de Janeiro just over every month or a new Russia every two years. Across the globe, the city has been overwhelmingly selected as the habitat of choice for humanity and has consequently become the nexus for an array of physical, economic, social, political and cultural capital.  So, by the middle of the twenty first century three in four of us will live in cities.

We are living in the urban age, which is more than just about cities, but is about how a mode of organizing space and society is shaping the world in which almost all of us live.  Those great cities of the twentieth century – Paris, London and others – continue to grow in size, slowly but surely.  However, some of the most important changes are happening elsewhere in the world-Delhi, Karachi, Mumbai, Shanghai, São Paulo; these cities are where the action is, where population growth rates are the highest, and where the issues of producing and managing ecological, economically, and socially sustainable cities are at the most pressing.

In this light, the course will introduce students to the challenges currently facing cities and to some of the ways academics have sought to make sense of them and policy-makers have sort to overcome them. Using case studies and discussions, the students will be equipped with knowledge to understand how cities of the future might develop, with a particular focus on the notion of the ‘smart’ city.

Through exercises the students will develop competence in the understanding of city analytics – how do we measure what is happening in cities?  Through the assessment process students will be able to undertake an evaluation of a chosen city and assess how that city and its future development is affected by changing socio-economic and environmental dynamics.

On successful completion of this course unit, you should be able to:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of different types of planning system across the globe.
2. Have an overview of the current issues facing cities in relation to their future development.
3. Recognise the challenges of what is commonly referred to as the ‘urban age’.
4. Have an appreciation of the notion of the ‘smart’ city.
5. Demonstrate a critical understanding of how cities are coping with competing social, economic and environmental demands.
6. Display an understanding of the global spatial disparities between cities.
7. Demonstrate an understanding of the different theoretical perspectives for understanding what is commonly referred to as the ‘urban age’.
8. Illustrate your arguments with examples and case studies drawn from cities around the world.
9. Demonstrate an appreciation of the various methods that have been used to study the current and future challenges facing cities around the world.
10. Illustrate your arguments with examples and case studies drawn from cities around the world.
11. Critical writing and analysis.
12. Effectively communicate ideas and concepts orally and in writing.

This is a self-directed online module with three face to face online workshops in weeks 4, 10 and 11. Part I will be released on Blackboard in one tranche and part two will be released after the workshop on the 17th November.

A Future City Profile Presentation (40%)

Essay and critical reflection (60%)

Batty, M. (2018) Inventing Future Cities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Burdett R (2010) Endless City. Phaidon Press, London.

Gleeson B (2013) The Urban Condition. Routledge: London.

Hall, P. and Tewdwr-Jones, M. (2019) Urban and Regional Planning, London: Routledge, 6th edition.

LeGates, R. T. and Stout, F. (2011) The City Reader. Taylor and Francis, Hoboken. 5th edition.

Monk, S., Whitehead, C., Burgess, G. and Tang, C. (2013) International review of land supply and planning systems, JRF, York.

Soja, E. (2010) Seeking spatial justice. University of Minnesota Press, Bristol.

Townsend, A. (2013). Smart cities¿: big data, civic hackers, and the quest for a new utopia. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Current reading list: https://manchester.alma.exlibrisgroup.com/leganto/public/44MAN_INST/lists/319969276250001631?auth=CAS