DBLN3018: Analyzing and Exploring the Global City

Cities around the world are striving to be “global.” This interdisciplinary course focuses on the physical, socio-economic, political, and cultural development of Dublin through space and time. Before students explore the city, chronologically they will examine ancient Ireland’s globality in terms of its educational and religious influences, particularly on mainland Europe. Then, starting from the 10th Century, students will retrace the Viking city through to the city’s current form that is characterised by urban sprawl, multiculturalism, and its connection to Europe and the global economy. Much of the first half of the course will explore the creation of the colonial city (Georgian Dublin) and, following independence from Britain, the creation of the postcolonial city. Each of these phases in the city’s morphology can be witnessed/read through an examination of the city’s architecture, nomenclature, museums, art, and in relation to the post-colonial city, oral histories, which requires an interdisciplinary toolkit for city exploration and analysis. The second section of the course will explore the policies that fostered the rapid speed at which Dublin grew from being a sparsely populated, non-industrial and disconnected urban space in the 1970s to a post-industrial/post-modern relatively highly populated dense plural space in the 1990s. Students will investigate the relationship between these policies and the devastating recession of the 2000s. Students will also explore the result of these rapid physical and socio-economic and cultural changes in terms of gentrification, immigration, and the complicated and contested nature of inner city residents’ notions of place, space, and identity. Students will also explore the creation of new multiethnic spaces and the city’s rebranding as a literary-cultural space (tourist Dublin). Finally, students will investigate the processes that occur in most global cities, which contribute to the creation of invisible spaces and subcultures that are found on the physical and cultural margins.

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