Course Description

[This is a certified Communication-intensive (Ci) Course which meets all of the requirements endorsed by HKU’s Senate, including i) the teaching and assessment of oral and written communication ‘literacies’; and ii) at least 40% of the course grade assigned to communication-rich assessment tasks.]

This course is designed to achieve two main objectives: (1) to guide students in developing a systemic and integrative understanding of cities and city-making within historical, thematic, and comparative contexts and from global, regional, and local perspectives; and (2) to provide students with systematic training in research by guiding students to transition from mere knowledge acquisition and consumption to knowledge creation. 

Cities are regarded as our greatest inventions. As political, socio-economic, and cultural centres, they exemplify human ingenuity, power, and capacity to manipulate resources and the environment. They also play crucial roles in shaping human settlement and development on both individual and collective levels. As such, they define human existence and civilisations. Since the 1800s, the unprecedented process of urbanisation and urban development in scale and speed has turned our Planet Earth into an Earthopolis. Over 55% of the global population now live in cities. The figure is estimated to rise to 68% by 2050. If the current urbanisation rate continues, the total global population living in cities could reach 100% by the end of this century. The unprecedented urbanisation and urban development process has a profound impact not only on our species but also on our planet. Though occupying only 3% of the Earth’s land surface (the Global Rural Urban Mapping Project), our world’s urban regions account for 80% of the global GDP, 60–80% of global energy consumption, 75% of global carbon emissions, and more than 75% of the world’s natural resource consumption. The future of humanity and our planet are fatefully linked with how our cities and urban regions are made and run. To understand how we have become an urban species; how cities fundamentally define the ways we live and how we relate to each other and the wider world; how we now exert a planetary impact on Earth, and how we may achieve sustainable development, it is imperative to look into our urban trajectory and investigate its key milestones. 

This course guides students in exploring the emergence of cities from the urban revolution around 5,000 BC first in Western Asia, through the key milestones of our urban evolution, to the current era of megacities and megaregions. In tracing this chronological trajectory, the course also trains students in examining a series of key themes concerning the making and remaking of cities across the globe, in terms of urban form, social structure, and functions, together with historical circumstances and forces that shape these. We will focus on the development of a particular urbanism as we expound each theme, while bringing in comparative materials to illustrate how these themes have been unravelled in similar and diverse ways in different regions and periods. Relevant urban and planning studies theories and methods will be introduced to facilitate our critical analysis of city-making. Assignments involve investigating both historical and modern urbanisms, with the group projects focusing on key areas of contemporary urban development in Hong Kong. All these aim at equipping students with the critical knowledge and perspectives necessary to tackle global sustainable urban development challenges in local contexts. 

The course champions enquiry-driven undergraduate teaching and learning by systematically guiding students in evidence-based research training and practice. Starting from spring 2026, the knowledge creation pedagogy is now supported by a digital database which clearly lays out step-by-step research and writing workflows and offers necessary resources and tools with sample learning outputs from previous cohorts. Along with critical thinking and research training and practice, the course also exposes students to design, planning, and policy analysis and recommendation. Students will be guided by the course teaching team on a weekly basis towards delivering expected and rewarding outcomes.

Course Learning Outcomes

On completing the course, students will be able to:

1. Demonstrate a city-scale, integrative, and systemic understanding of cities by analysing the interconnections between urban form, social structure and governance, and functions in relation to individual and collective human life and behavioural patterns.
2. Trace the historical trajectory of key urban morphological, governance, and functional features (e.g., grided form, humanistic planning and governance, public spaces and facilities, housing provision); analyse tradition and innovation by identifying common and distinctive features among diverse urban societies across different historical periods; and assess the impact of continuity and change in shaping contemporary urbanisms.
3. Gain a scalar perspective of city-making on international, national, regional, and local levels and be able to investigate the interactions among these differentiated and interconnected scales of urban planning and design, policy-making, and urban functions.
4. Familiar with the knowledge creation process in academia in terms of the step-by-step process involved in academic research and writing and be able to locate and utilise reliable academic and professional resources and apply basic skills in project management, individual and group research, critical thinking, policy analysis and recommendation, and spatial analysis in academic and professional settings to deliver historically informed, methodologically aware, well-structured and composed, properly styled and referenced, factually verified, proofread written work. Presentations need to be cogent, and visually well-designed.

Offer Semester and Day of Teaching

Second semester (Wed)