Departmental Elective: Places in Cities
This subject was conceived as a part of the objectives of this project and delivered as an online elective in the two-year Masters program in Urban Design at the School of Architecture. Envisaged as a trans-disciplinary exposure to the dynamics of place-making, the elective sought to bring together multi-dimensional views and thoughts within the broader discourse of space and place. Pedagogically, the elective consisted of lectures by internal faculty of SPA Delhi as well as by guest faculty from HCTS, Heidelberg and included a student seminar on ‘Key Thinkers of Space and Place’. The course covers transdisciplinary perspectives and practices as well as, relational concepts of space and place, the making of place, place-framing as place-making, economics and cultural politics of place-making, arguments on place-making as right, global-local dimensions of space, place-making agency and collaborative place-making. The elective is proposed to continue as an advanced elective in the following semester with a wider cohort of students across various planning and design disciplines of SPA. An e-course around the same theme is further envisaged for an inter-institutional and trans-disciplinary development of the subject and expanded participation.