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The new millennium is the first "urban millennium" both in terms of the percentage of people living in cities and towns and in terms of the importance of urban settings for economic growth and social interactions. At the same time, too many urban dwellers lack access to public, green spaces, to public transportation, education or health care, to name just a few of the issues addressed by the sustainable development goal 11 of the United Nations' Agenda 2030 (U.N., Transforming Our World, 2015). This specific sustainable development goal calls on academic research and education to help "make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable." And it lists cultural production, education, sports, mental and physical health among the factors that improve the livability of cities. As scholars, students and professionals in the fields of literature, culture, society and medicine we ask ourselves: what does it take to intervene in urban change, especially if this intervention comes at the very point at which a concrete city becomes a better or a worse place for its human and non-human inhabitants?
There is a new sense that literature and the arts might play a bigger role than previously understood. As Simone d'Antonio, a member of the EU-funded project URBACT suggests, "[s]torytelling is a key tool for improving any urban planning process, both for engaging residents in different dimensions of the spatial regeneration as for helping professionals in better understanding users' needs" (https://urbact.eu/articles/storytelling-urban-change-narrative-thriving-streets 2022). But how and in what ways does storytelling become so very crucial to these concise interventions into historical, social and economic dynamics? In this international master class, we will initiate a teaching cooperation between the UDE and the Ecole d'Urbanisme at UPEC in Paris, to take a closer look at storytelling in urban planning and development and its resonance in contemporary novels and life narratives by authors such as N.K. Jemison, Louise Erdrich and Salvador Plascencia, social media posts by urban activists and questionnaires designed by sociologists to study the urban condition. This course is organized as an in-person block seminar attended by students from UPEC and UDE in Essen in early October 2025, followed by two debriefing online sessions later in the term.
This AURORA seminar is a co-taught blended learning enterprise between the urban planning master program at the University of Paris-Est, Prof. Dr. Marcus Zepf, and the UDE American Studies program. It addresses SDG 11 – the global goal to "make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable." This class will use a variety of formats – including excursions in the Ruhr region, (guest) lectures from partners in the AURORA University Alliance, directed student research, and field work – to examine past and contemporary visions and examples of sustainable cities.
This class will allow students to improve their Information Literacy, Analysis, Written Communication, and Intercultural Knowledge competences. |
