Transatlantic City Scripts: Perspectives on Green and Creative Urban Futures

More than half of the world’s population currently lives in urban areas and this number is certain to increase in the future. From a transatlantic perspective, this course examines processes of urban transformation in American and German cities with a special focus on creativity and sustainability. Through a combination of theory and practical examples from the deindustrialized regions of the German Ruhr Area and American Rust Belt cities as well as the metropolitan area of Atlanta, this course aims to analyze efforts that script such cities either as creative or green. What stories are told around those efforts of city planning and marketing? What kind of media is used? The comparison will highlight in which ways these concepts travel globally but also how they differ in their regional adaptations. By means of an interdisciplinary urban cultural studies focus, we will investigate the green and creative urban scripts and discuss their effects on the social, cultural, economic, and ecological levels. This course is going to be project-based and if the restrictions allow might include a field trip into the city which will give students concrete insights into the ways in which urban re-imagination is put to work.

Due to its practice-based content, this course is particularly recommended for students of the Angewandte Studiengänge.