For the first time in history more than half the world’s population live in urban areas. Therefore, understanding cities has never been more important. This module serves both to introduce students to the sub-discipline of urban geography, and to examine how cities function and operate, using key tools and concepts of the field. The module typically covers a range of themes and issues, including theorisations of urban space and place; social relations and spatial structures; understanding cities, nature and environment; issues of urban economy, power and socio-spatial inequalities and polarisation; and the different dynamics of cities in the global North and South. Overall, the module has strong theoretical, conceptual and empirical components that seek to develop students’ understanding of the fundamental social and spatial dynamics of contemporary cities.

1. Explain the factors which have been influential in shaping contemporary cities.
2. Engage in debates about the significance of the dynamics of social structures and social change in cities.
3. Identify and analyse key contemporary urban problems.
4. Evaluate the implications of urban policy in relation to selected urban problems.
5. Discuss urban and social change in relation to selected cities.

The module will be delivered through lectures and seminars, in-person and on campus unless mitigating circumstances arise. Seminars will enable small group discussion about key issues relevant to the module. Students are expected to engage with additional module content on Learning Central e.g. readings or other material, to prepare for lectures and seminars, and to supplement and deepen taught components.

1. Analytical skills: an ability to critique the conceptual tools and empirical arguments that characterise the paradigms and approaches prevailing within urban geography.
2. Discussion: an ability to participate in informed discussion of key urban geographical concepts and materials.
3. Debating skills: an ability to engage in debate over contending urban theories and their application in practice.
4. Written presentation of ideas: an ability to set out key ideas of the field in a clear and coherent way, and to evaluate contending academic arguments.

Responding to feedback: a capacity to take on board feed-back/-forward from the written assessment of the module and to build on these in the final examination.

A blend of coursework and portfolio assessment

Formative Assessment

Formative assessment takes place throughout the module.  There are learning checks in every lecture and the workshops which support the assessments provide an opportunity for peer to peer and tutor feedback.

THE OPPORTUNITY FOR REASSESSMENT IN THIS MODULE:

Re-assessment

Students are permitted to be reassessed in a module which they have failed, in line with University regulations. https://intranet.cardiff.ac.uk/staff/teaching-and-supporting-students/teaching-support/academic-regulations. You will only be reassessed on the components of the module in which you have failed. The format of the reassessment will be the same as the original assessment and will take place in the Summer re-sit period.

This module typically begins with an introduction to the key geographical concepts of space and place that shape the way we understand cities. We then consider the different scales at which cities operate, ranging from the global, in terms of the flows of capital, information and people that shape urban lives, through to the local, in terms of the neighbourhoods and communities within which these flows take shape.

Topical issues considered by the module also typically include:

• nature and cities
• the importance of individual and collective identities to urban living
• the politics of people and place
• processes of gentrification
• the urban geography of inequalities.