Section 1. Introducing Urban Sustainability Politics

1

9/4

Rethinking Sustainable Development

From Brundtland to degrowth

Class orientation,

In-class sharing

Weekly reading

Syllabus

Kaul, S., Akbulut, B., Demaria, F. et al. Alternatives to sustainable development: what can we learn from the pluriverse in practice?. Sustain Sci 17, 1149–1158 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-022-01210-2

Extended Reading

Arturo Escobar (2011). "Sustainability: Design for the pluriverse," Development, Palgrave Macmillan; Society for International Development, vol. 54(2), pages 137-140, June.

Zhang, Q. et al. (2016) ‘More than target 6.3: A Systems Approach to Rethinking Sustainable Development Goals in a resource-scarce world’, Engineering, 2(4), pp. 481–489. doi:10.1016/j.eng.2016.04.010.

2

9/11

Urban Politics: Who Governs Cities?

Formal vs. informal power structures

(Pre-class) Weekly Reflective Journal

(In-class) Lecture, group discussion

Weekly reading

Vanesa Castán Broto & Harriet Bulkeley (2013). “A survey of urban climate change experiments in 100 cities,” Global Environmental Change 23(1): 92–102.

Robin, E., & Acuto, M. (2022). The politics of “urban expertise”: shifting horizons for critical urban scholarship? Urban Geography, 44(3), 431–446. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2022.2148504

3

9/18

Horizontal and Vertical Urbanization in Asia

(Pre-class) Weekly Reflective Journal

(In-class) Lecture, group discussion

Weekly reading

Cook, N. T., & Kerr, S.-M. (2023). Assembling high-rise: The uneven agencies of air in suburban densification in the Anthropocene. Urban Studies, 61(7), 1308-1326. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231205026 (Original work published 2024)

Circuits of power: Environmental injustice from Bangkok's shopping malls to Laos’ hydropower dams

Extended reading

Hillary Angelo, David Wachsmuth (2014) Urbanizing Urban Political Ecology: A Critique of Methodological Cityism, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 39(1), 16-27.

 

Creighton Connolly (2018) Urban Political Ecology Beyond Methodological Cityism, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 43(1), 63-75.

4

9/25

Informal & Insurgent Urbanisms

Extracurricular Visit: Informal settlements by the riverside in the Taipei Metropolitan Area

(Pre-class) Weekly Reading

(In-class) Guided tour, Q&A

Weekly reading

Roy, A. (2005). Urban Informality: Toward an Epistemology of Planning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 71(2), 147–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944360508976689

Shrestha, P., & Aranya, R. (2015). Claiming Invited and Invented Spaces: Contingencies for Insurgent Planning Practices. International Planning Studies, 20(4), 424–443. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563475.2015.1028909

Extended Reading

Juliana Canedo (2025) Co-producing Urban Spaces: Collaborative Methods Towards an Insurgent Urbanism, transcriptVerlag.

Section 2. Interrogating Urban Agendas and Paradigmatic Transitions

5

10/2

Urban & Climate Politics

Action Agendas and Their Critics

(Pre-class) Weekly Memo

(In-class) Lecture, Guided Reading, Discussion

Weekly Readings

Jensen, C. B. (2021). Material Itineraries: Southeast Asian Urban Transformations. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, 15(2), 124–134. https://doi.org/10.1080/18752160.2021.1917840

6

10/9

Policy Transfer and Mutation

Case Study: Urban Energy Transition

(Pre-class) Weekly Memo

(In-class) Lecture, Guided Reading, Discussion

Weekly Readings

Cottineau, C., Batty, M., Benenson, I., Delloye, J., Hatna, E., Pumain, D., Sarkar, S., Tannier, C., & Ubarevičienė, R. (2024). The role of analytical models and their circulation in urban studies and policy. Urban Studies, 61(12), 2370-2398. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241237410

Peck, J. and Theodore, N. (2010) Mobilizing policy: Models, methods, and mutations, Geoforum, Vol. 41, 169–174.

Extended Reading

Bok, Rachel and Coe, Neil M. (2017) Geographies of policy knowledge: The state and corporate dimensions of contemporary policy mobilities,

Cities, Volume 63, pp. 51-57, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2017.01.001.

Bok, R. (2019) Urban Mobile Policy in Anthony Orum (ed.) The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies, John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

7

10/16

Urban Paradigms and the Mutations (i): Zero-Carbon Cities

(Pre-class) Weekly Memo

(In-class) Lecture, Guided Reading, Discussion

Weekly Readings

Namba, M. (2021). Material Itineraries of Electric Tuk-Tuks: The Challenges of Green Urban Development in Laos. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, 15(2), 173–191. https://doi.org/10.1080/18752160.2021.1897737

Bulkeley, Harriet (2021) Climate changed urban futures: environmental politics in the anthropocene city, Environmental Politics, 30:1-2, 266-284, DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2021.1880713

Extended Reading

Karen C. Seto, Galina Churkina, Angel Hsu, Meredith Keller, Peter W.G. Newman, Bo Qin, and Anu Ramaswami (2021) Annual Review of Environment and Resources From Low- to Net-Zero Carbon Cities: The Next Global Agenda, Annual Review of Environment and Resource, Vol. 46:377–415.

8

10/23

(Undergrads) On-site Mid-term Exam/ 

(Postgrads) Online Mid-term Proposal Submission

9

10/30

ESG and Its Discontents

(Pre-class) Weekly Memo

(In-class) Lecture, Guided Reading, Discussion

Weekly reading/listening

Mazzucato, Marriana and Rosie Collington (2023) The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens Our Businesses, Infantilizes Our Governments, and Warps Our Economies, Penguin Press. (Chapter 9. Climate Consulting)

Knuth, S., Taylor, Z., Zavareh Hofmann, S., Grafe, F. J., & Ponder, C. (2025). The urbanization of climate finance: Understanding for urban action. Journal of Urban Affairs, 47(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2024.2393973

Extended resources

Listen: How companies, countries are beginning to put a value on nature, S&P Global

10

11/6

Roles of Environmental Accounting in Urban/ Climate Governance

Carbon Accounting and Carbon Trading

(Pre-class) Weekly Memo

(In-class) Lecture, Guided Reading, Discussion

Francisco Ascui, Heather Lovell (2012) Carbon accounting and the construction of competence, Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol.36, pp.48-59.

11

11/13

Green Finance, SDGs & Global Metrics

(Pre-class) Weekly Memo

(In-class) Lecture, Guided Reading, Discussion

12

11/20

Guest Speaker / Field Visit: Green Startups or Urban Peripheries or Urban Repair Movement

(Pre-class) Weekly Memo

(In-class) Lecture, Guided Reading, Discussion

13

11/27

Rethinking AI & Sustainability Politics

Guest Lecturer: Dr. Pen-Yuan HSING (University of Bristol, UK)

(Before the class) USR Project Pitching 4-7 pm 

(In-class) Guest Lecture, Discussion

 

Extended Reading

Star, Susan Leigh (2002) Infrastructure and ethnographic practice, Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, 14(2): 107-122  

14

12/4

Urban De-growth

(Pre-class) Weekly Memo

(In-class) Lecture, Group Discussion (with Kyushu U students), Sharing  & general discussion

15

12/11

Maintenance, Repair, and Care

(Pre-class) Weekly Memo

(In-class) Lecture, Group Discussion (with Kyushu U students), Sharing  & general discussion

Weekly Reading

Marıa Jose Zapata Campos, Patrik Zapata, and Isabel Ordonez (2020) Urban commoning practices in the repair movement: Frontstaging the backstage, Environment and Planning A, Vol. 52, Iss. 6, pp. 1150-1170.

Mattern, S. (2018) Maintenance and Care, Place Journal. Available at: https://placesjournal.org/article/maintenance-and-care/

Extended Reading

Rosa-Aquino, P. (2022). Fix, or Toss? The ‘Right to Repair’ Movement Gains Ground (Published 2020). Retrieved 16 February 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/climate/right-to-repair.html

16

12/18

End-of-Term Project Presentation

With Kyushu University students participating as commentators and reviewers