Storytelling for open cities: towards human-centred planning

Course goals

• identify and summarize theoretical approaches on (the relation between) the production of urban spaces and everyday urban experience;           
• identify and examine how media practices and representations have been constitutive of urban culture and how they intersect with urban policymaking and planning;
• examine how the design and planning of urban spaces produce patterns of inclusion and exclusion;
• collect stories on marginalised lived urban experiences in an ethical manner and to translate these experiences into an audiovisual story that can be shared with a wider audience;
• critically reflect on the normative content of your proposition and on the process of formulating it.

Content

Content

Contemporary cities face multiple and intersecting crises, apparent through increasing pollution, congestion, a lack of public spaces and the intensification of intersecting socio-economic, racial and gender disparities in the city. How can these crises be countered by creating a lively, safe, inclusive and healthy urban environment? This is a key challenge that urban policymakers and planners face worldwide. Combining concepts from human geography, spatial planning and media and cultural studies, and using a mix of academic texts and audiovisual material, this course offers an in-depth understanding of the sources or urban crises, including the legacy of modernist planning and the increasing commodification of urban space through capital. Against this background, it proposes to use creative storytelling to re-imagine cities as more human-centred and ‘open’, accommodating the spatial needs of different (neglected) urban dwellers.

The course starts by discussing the ideal of the ‘open city’ as articulated by The Quito Papers and The New Urban Agenda, a compilation of papers by key urbanists that emerged from the United Nation’s 2016 conference on Housing and Sustainable Development. Drawing on the work of Henri Lefebvre and reflecting on cinematic representations of urban life, we then move on to develop a multidisciplinary perspective on how cities, according to Lefebvre once ‘a living creative process’ and ‘works of art’, have become spaces of alienation. Moreover, we expand on Lefebvre’s work to consider how urban planning has constituted public spaces as exclusionary ‘sensescapes’, and how it has been implicated in reproducing the marginalization of gendered, racialized and aging bodies. 

Parallel to this intellectual exploration, the course will familiarise you with creative storytelling methods. Planning scholars and practitioners increasingly recognize the need to listen to the stories that people tell: the stories through which urbanites make sense of their personal and collective identities, feelings, and experience. You will experiment with creative storytelling methods in groups while working on your Creative storytelling assignment that captures and expresses the perspective and lived urban experience of a marginalized and un(der)represented group.

How this course complements other courses:
- in the Creative cities minor: 
If you are enrolled in the Creative Cities minor this first course will lay the theoretical foundation for the rest of the minor by introducing you to the concept of the “open city” and, relatedly, to theories about urban in- and exclusion and the question of the right to the city from the perspective of urban planning. Characteristic for all courses in this minor is that you will learn about the city, not just by engaging with theoretical texts, but by getting out of the classroom into the city, using creative methods to explore the urban landscape. In this course particularly, you will learn how you can use creative storytelling to tell the often-unheard stories of those who feel excluded from the city.

- in the Bachelor programme Human Geography and Spatial Planning
o If you are enrolled in/follow courses from the Inclusive cities track, you will be familiar with some of the (critical political economic) theoretical perspectives and concepts related to urban in/exclusion. Through this course, you will acquire relevant additional knowledge on the role of modernist planning in (re)producing exclusion. Furthermore, you will learn how urban imaginaries conveyed by films have variously problematized or depoliticized changes in material cityscapes and urban power relations. Also, you will enrich your qualitative methodological skills and experiment with storytelling to gain in-depth understanding of peoples’ lived urban experience.
o If you are enrolled in/follow courses from the Planning of sustainable cities track, you will be familiar with insights and concepts regarding the role of urban planning. Through this course, you will gain relevant additional insights on the historical evolution of this role, and how planning has been (seen) both a response to and source of urban crises. Moreover, you will learn how urban imaginaries conveyed by films help us critically reflect on the changes in the urban environment and, by extension, on the role of planners. Furthermore, you will enrich your qualitative methodological skills by experimenting with storytelling and will thus gain hands-on knowledge for becoming a reflexive, humanist planner.