Course detail

Research Project: Policy of Integrative Urbanism

FA-RPR-ZEAcad. year: 2025/2026

This course is aimed to acquaint students with current strategic documents, which systematize the main values of urban development and are intended to shape „the urban“ in the EU context and beyond. In the course process students are acquainted with the major international urban development agendas, as well as taught to critically assess and operationalize the main principles of these agendas in specific urban contexts. Special attention is paid to the principles of integrative urbanism – coordination of urban policy in a spatial, sectoral and temporal dimension; as well as coordination of urban policy among multi-level actors. The main value horizons for this coordination discussed in the course are ‚just city‘, ‚green city‘, and ‚productive city‘ (The New Leipzig Charter). Students are taught to critically analyze these three dimensions of urban policy and to assess variety of their outcomes.
Structurally the course consists of two parts. First part is devoted to lectures about international urban development agendas, as well as to presentations of the projects realized by the course faculty and invited guests. Second part of the course is devoted to the steered by tutors small groups’ research projects.

Language of instruction

English

Number of ECTS credits

12

Mode of study

Not applicable.

Guarantor

Assoc. Prof. Siarhei Liubimau, Dr.

Department

European Humanities University ()

Aims

  • Students are aware of levels and scales of urban policy in the European context and beyond.
  • Students understand and are able to critically analyze the values of ‚just city’, ‚green city’, and ‚productive city’ (The New Leipzig Charter) from a historical perspective.
  • Students know the main arguments and transmitted values of such strategic documents as New Urban Agenda; Pact of Amsterdam; Territorial Agenda 2030. A Future for All Places; The New Leipzig Charter.
  • Students know how to analyze the impacts in local urban development agendas of such strategic documents as New Urban Agenda; Pact of Amsterdam; Territorial Agenda 2030. A Future for All Places; The New Leipzig Charter.
  • Students learn to apply the concepts depicting different urban policy approaches to their empirical field of studies. 
  • Students learn to perform empirical analysis of specific situated urban policy approaches.
  • Students learn to use available data and to gather their own research data (guided by course instructors) to operationalize the key concepts in the field of integrative urban development.
  • Students learn to apply the notions from strategic documents on urban development to comment on and to propose urban policy scenarios locally.
  • Students learn to work in the format of group projects; to present their projects to their peers and wider audience. 

Rules for evaluation and completion of the course

  • Active and constructive participation in lectures and seminars (25%, at the end of the course)
  • Presentation of a course reading (50%, at the end of the course)
  • Final presentation of group project (50%, right after the presentation)

Study aids

Not applicable.

Prerequisites and corequisites

Not applicable.

Basic literature

Afzalan, N. and Muller, B. (2018). Online Participatory Technologies: Opportunities and Challenges for Enriching Participatory Planning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 84(2), 162-177. (EN)
Barns, S. (2019). Negotiating the Platform pivot: From Participatory Digital Ecosystems to Infrastructures of Everyday Life. Geography Compass, 13(2), 1-13. (EN)
Barns, S. (2020). Re-Engineering the City: Platform Ecosystems and the Capture of Urban Big Data. Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, 2(32), 1-8. (EN)
Bloomfield, Jon and Steward, Fred. 2020. “The Politics of the Green New Deal” in The Political Quarterly 91(4) (EN)
Boyer, Dominic. 2018. “Infrastructure, Potential Energy, Revolution” in Anand, Nikhil et al (eds) The Promise of Infrastructure. Duke University Press (EN)
Bridge, Gavin et al. 2013. “Geographies of Energy Transition: Space, Place and Low-Carbon Economy” in Energy Policy 53 (EN)
Dlabac, Oliver; Zwicky, Roman; Carpenter, Juliet and Pereira, Patricia. 2022. “Towards the ‘Just City’? Exploring the Attitudes of European City Mayors” in Urban Research and Practice, pp. 215-238 (EN)
Fainstein, Susan S. 2013. “The Just City” in International Journal of Urban Sciences, 18(1) (EN)
Harriet Bulkeley et al. 2019. “Urban Living Laboratories: Conducting the Experimental City?” in European Urban and Regional Studies (EN)
Kern, Kristine. 2019. “Cities as Leaders in EU Multilevel Climate Governance: Embedded Upscaling of Local Experiments in Europe” in Environmental Politics, 28(1), 125-145 (EN)
Kuč, Miodrag. 2020. Hacking Urban Furniture. Berlin: Z/KU Press (EN)
Liubimau, Siarhei and Cope, Benjamin. 2021. Re-Tooling Knowledge Infrastructures in a Nuclear Town. Vilnius Academy of Arts Press (EN)
New Urban Agenda. 2017. United Nations. https://habitat3.org/wp-content/uploads/NUA-English.pdf (EN)
Pact of Amsterdam. 2016. https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/system/files/ged/pact-of-amsterdam_en.pdf (EN)
Pasquale, Frank. 2015. The Black Box Society. The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press (EN)
Pianta, Mario and Lucchese, Matteo. 2020. “Rethinking the European Green Deal: An Industrial Policy for a Just Transition in Europea” in Review of Radical Political Economics. pp. 1-9 (EN)
Rossi, Ugo. 2022. “The Existential Threat of Urban Revival and the Extinction Crisis in the European South”. In Antipode, 54(3) (EN)
Territorial Agenda 2030. A Future for All Places. 2020. https://territorialagenda.eu/wp-content/uploads/TA2030_jun2021_en.pdf (EN)
The New Leipzig Charter. 2020. https://eurocities.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/New-leipzig-charter_2020.pdf (EN)
Van Dijk, J., Poell, Th., De Wall, M. (2018). The Platform Society: Public Values in a Connective World. Oxford University Press (EN)

Recommended reading

Not applicable.

Classification of course in study plans

  • Programme NE_INUS Master's 1 year of study, summer semester, compulsory

Type of course unit

 

Seminar

40 hod., compulsory

Teacher / Lecturer

Assoc. Prof. Siarhei Liubimau, Dr.

Syllabus

3) Understandings of the ‘just city’ dimension [2 hours]
4) Understandings of the ‘green city’ dimension [2 hours]
5) Understandings of the ‘productive city’ dimension [2 hours]
6) Role of participatory practices in defining urban policy [2 hours]
7) Digitalisation challenge for cities and the ways to critique it [2 hours]
8) Urban dimension of energy transformations [2 hours]
9) Urban cultural and knowledge infrastructures [2 hours]
10) Discussion of group projects ideas [4 hours]
11) Field visits / field meetings [4 hours]
12) Workshop on research methods for group projects [4 hours]
13) Presentations and discussion of research projects’ drafts [4 hours]
14) Workshop on theoretical framing of group projects [4 hours]
15) Consultations on tools of visual presentation of research results [2 hours]
16) Final presentations of group research projects [4 hours]

Lecture

24 hod., optionally

Teacher / Lecturer

Assoc. Prof. Siarhei Liubimau, Dr.

Syllabus

1) Introduction to integrative urban policy [2 hours]
2) Spatial scales of integrative urban policy [4 hours]
3) Understandings of the ‘just city’ dimension [2 hours]
4) Understandings of the ‘green city’ dimension [2 hours]
5) Understandings of the ‘productive city’ dimension [2 hours]
6) Role of participatory practices in defining urban policy [2 hours]
7) Digitalisation challenge for cities and the ways to critique it [4 hours]
8) Urban dimension of energy transformations [4 hours]
9) Urban cultural and knowledge infrastructures [2 hours]