Assessment 2: End of Term Essay (80%)
You should write a 2,500 word essay on one of the titles listed below. This exercise is intended to test skills of researching appropriate academic literature, critical evaluation of that literature, and developing a coherent argument within a longer piece of writing. In preparing for this exercise, you are therefore expected to develop your own reading list: the key readings circulated in the seminars themselves and the fuller list of supporting resources for each seminar (in the handouts available on MOLE) will provide useful starting points for this, but it is expected that you will also search out appropriate readings of your own.
Questions:
• Explain the contention that a focus on data and metrics represent damaging simplifications of both people and places, and its implications for how planning and development practice should engage with the Global South.
• Critically examine whether and to what extent traveling planning ideas originated in the context of countries in the Global North are limited in its application by the ‘stubborn realities’ (Watson 2012) of Global South cities.
• Contrasting theoretical perspectives on informality offer both explanations for its persistent presence within cities of the Global South, and some policy prescriptions: which do you think is the most useful and why?
• Are interventions by the state with the aim of increasing urban land values ultimately good or bad for inclusive urban development? Why?
• Evaluate the challenges for infrastructural provision in the Global South and how planners and residents are responding to them.
• Although the role of planning and development professionals’ knowledge has been subject to sustained theoretical critique, attempts to make planning and development practice open to ‘multiple epistemologies’ (Sandercock 2003) remain contentious and elusive. Discuss.
2
• To what degree have policy responses to MDG and SDG targets around slum housing supported the inclusion of low-income households within cities of the Global South?
• Discuss the contention that development and planning practice will be made more democratic through ‘insurgent planning’ and ‘invented spaces’ of participation.
Assessment Criteria
You will be assessed on the following criteria, related to the learning aims of the module as a whole:
• Your knowledge of the core debates and theoretical frameworks which inform understandings of planning and development problems
• Your ability to engage critically with literature in urban and development studies
• Your ability to develop arguments and communicate these effectively in written form
In all cases, credit will be given for the use of appropriate case studies to illustrate your argument.
