Political Analysis of spatial Planning Criteria

Planning space involves making decisions that shape how it is experienced and lived, affecting the everyday lives of the many actors who inhabit it. Although grounded in technical aspects, such decisions are inherently political: imagining and designing space entails translating particular values, interests, and worldviews into material forms. For this reason, it is essential that future architects and planners understand the political dimensions of their profession and are able to engage with them in a critical and reflective manner.

Throughout the course, we will examine and discuss key theoretical debates and explore their implications for architecture and spatial planning. Through the analysis of empirical case studies, students will be encouraged to engage with different perspectives and to develop their own critical understanding of spatial transformation.

The course includes a field trip in Ticino.

Session 1: Course introduction and intersectionality in territorial analysis

Sessions 2–3: The production of space (Lefebvre)

Session 4: Urbanism and ideology (Lefebvre)

Session 5: The city as a site of political struggle (Harvey)

Session 6: The right to the city (Harvey)

Session 7: Urban infrastructure regimes (Monstadt)

Session 8: GIS and intersectionality (Fast & Deitz)

Session 9: Mobility and power (guest speaker: Dr Baehler)

Session 10: Plants and urban identity (Cometta; Horta Duarte)

Session 11: Ticino and spatial planning (Cometta)

Session 12: Domestic space and social roles (Westgate)

The course provides students with the conceptual foundations necessary to understand the political and ideological dynamics that shape space and territory as we know them. Its aim is to foster the ability to develop independent critical reflections on space and, consequently, on architecture and urbanism. Throughout the course, students will engage with and discuss concepts such as the production of space and the right to the city, as well as theoretical perspectives including intersectionality, environmental history, and urban political ecology. The course also seeks to strengthen students’ ability to apply theoretical and conceptual frameworks to the analysis of empirical case studies through appropriate methodologies, equipping them with transferable skills that can be applied both in doctoral research and in professional practice.

• Sustainable cities and communities
• Peace, justice and strong institutions

In presence

The course will develop the students’ reading and discussion skills.

The course is structured as a reading and discussion seminar, and therefore involves a high degree of interaction between students and the lecturer. It is a dynamic and participatory setting, in which both students and the classroom space itself play an active role in shaping the course’s form and development. Activities include collective reading sessions (classes dedicated to reading and jointly discussing texts), some lecture-based sessions, group readings to be completed at home, and the development of an individual research project on the themes addressed.

Students are expected to develop a solid theoretical understanding and to apply it to the analysis of contemporary spatial phenomena. The focus of the course is not the mere reproduction of theoretical concepts, but rather the ability to employ them critically and empirically in territorial analysis.

The evaluation is based on three components:

-    Final submission of a poster (individual or group research project), 40%

-    Active participation in lessons, 40%

-    Presentation of a reading assignment completed at home, 20%