Cities of the Global South

Course Description

The fastest growing city in the world today is in Nigeria. The city that added the largest number of people over the last year is in India. Cities in the global south are rising, forming, and reshaping rapidly, but until recently they were the subject of much misunderstanding. The problem is not that powerful Northern actors ignored cities of the global south; rather, it is that the entire framework for their study emerged from models based on European and U.S. cities. Because of this, global north scholars, planners, architects, policy makers, economists, and development experts have systematically "misread" cities around the world. This course explores urbanization and city life in three world regions: Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia. We consider the political and economic contexts of rapid urban growth, the role of infrastructure and transportation, the cultures of rural-to-urban migration, as well as the modes of life that take hold in global south cities.