SPL-3010 Culture, Politics and Planning - 10 stp

The course is mandatory for students in Nordic Urban Planning (NUPS) doing their 3rd semester in Tromsø.

The course may also be taken as a singular course for qualified students.

This course explores the relationship between culture and politics in planning and development of cities.

A key question revolves around how everyday life practices, experiences, and perceptions intersect with the formal, institutionalized processes of governance, decision-making, and administration. The way this relationship is understood and managed within knowledge-based planning and development processes has significant implications for what realities inform planning decisions, how planning shape realities, and subsequent power-relevant cultural and political questions.

The course places particular emphasis on land use pressure and nature contestations within cities and in places and landscapes that are part of the wider geographies that cities develop within. This focus brings to the forefront critical questions about how culture and politics intersect through a variety of topics of concern under the dual condition of the nature- and climate crises. Among such topics are greening the city, just transitions and environmental justice, environmental history, urbanization and centralization, centre-periphery relations, and (post)colonial processes.

These topics open discussions over what and who land and nature is for. Such contestations over the use of land and nature unfold within planning processes that engage with natural and cultural realities within and beyond urban landscapes.

Bachelor degree in social science is required as a general rule.

Applicants must have a minimum grade average comparable to a Norwegian C (2,5) in the ECTS scale.

The course is open for students accepted in master's degree programmes in other social science disciplines.

Application code: 9371

The students have the following learning outcomes:

Knowledge

The student has:

• insight into theoretical perspectives on the relationship between culture and politics
• an understanding of how the relationship between culture and politics is at play in development of the knowledge-base for planning
• an analytical understanding of how culture and politics are brought together through topics related to mitigating, and adapting to, climate change and biodiversity loss in urban planning and development

Skills

The student can:

• make use of perspectives on the intersection of culture and politics in urban planning and development processes
• use theoretical understandings of the relationship between culture and politics in critical analyses of the knowledge base for planning and administrative decisions
• apply relational-geographic perspectives to identify how culture and politics are brought together in planning-relevant contestations concerning the use of land and nature

Competences

The student has:

• competencies in understanding how culture and politics intersect in urban planning processes and in the development of knowledge-base in such processes
• competencies in the use of theoretical and analytical perspectives on how culture and politics are brought together in contestations over the use of land and nature in urban development

The language of instruction is English.

Language of examination is English or Norwegian.