6 ECTS credits
180 h study time

Offer 1 with catalog number 4018481BNR for all students in the 1st and 2nd semester at a (B) Bachelor - advanced level.

Semester
1st and 2nd semester
Enrollment based on exam contract
Impossible
Grading method
Grading (scale from 0 to 20)
Can retake in second session
Yes
Taught in
Dutch
Faculty
Faculty of Sciences and Bioengineering Sciences
Department
Geography
Educational team
Nele Aernouts (course titular)
Activities and contact hours
21 contact hours Lecture
15 contact hours Seminar, Exercises or Practicals
87 contact hours Independent or External Form of Study
Course Content

In this course theorizations of space will be linked to contemporary urban design and planning praxis and different research methods to analyze the urban environment. In addition to the work of scholars in social and spatial disciplines that tried to capture the relationship between space and society, voices from the progressive, feminist and postcolonial urban design and planning tradition – who have engaged with these methods and have drawn attention to diversity, subjectivity and epistemology in planning – are treated in this course. The course is supported through an inductive approach and empirical qualitative research methods.

Additional info

Students will learn how to analyze and interpret the complex and ambiguous relationships between space and social relationships by approaching and researching a site from various methodological angles. The course exists of lectures, readings and fieldwork sessions. During the fieldwork sessions,  basic research methods will be trained and applied in a specific Brussels neighbourhood.

Learning Outcomes

Goals

  1. The student is able to identify various theories that try to capture the relationship between society and space. The student is able to theoretically ground urban design and planning approaches within these theories.
  2. The student can explain and characterize Lefebvre’s ‘triad of space’ in his/her own words, recognize its three elements (conceived, perceived and lived space) and link them to contemporary methodological urban design and planning concepts that try to grasp these elements. The student is able to detect the ethical and political underpinnings of these concepts.
  3. The student is able to critically analyze qualitative and quantitative data of the policy and planning context in which urban designers and planners engage themselves, and the discourses and power relationships that underlie them.  
  4. The student can apply various methods of area-based research including mapping, observing and interviewing.
  5. The student develops a free and critically inquiring attitude in the interpretation of different research methods and the positioning of these methods in relation to each other.

Grading

The final grade is composed based on the following categories:
Written Exam determines 80% of the final mark.
PRAC Teamwork determines 20% of the final mark.

Within the Written Exam category, the following assignments need to be completed:

  • Written exam with a relative weight of 1 which comprises 80% of the final mark.

Within the PRAC Teamwork category, the following assignments need to be completed:

  • Participation & group ass with a relative weight of 1 which comprises 20% of the final mark.

Additional info regarding evaluation

The assessment consists of the following categories:
1.    Participation and group assignments during fieldwork sessions determine 20% of the final grade
2.    Written examination determines 80% of the final grade

Allowed unsatisfactory mark
The supplementary Teaching and Examination Regulations of your faculty stipulate whether an allowed unsatisfactory mark for this programme unit is permitted.

Academic context

This offer is part of the following study plans:
Master of Urban Design and Spatial Planning: Track 1 (Bachelor via SCH of VRB) (only offered in Dutch)
Master of Urban Design and Spatial Planning: Track 2 (Master indirect) (only offered in Dutch)
Master of Urban Design and Spatial Planning: Track 3 (Bachelor of Master direct) (only offered in Dutch)