This reading seminar examines how modern cities have been conceptualized in historiography and related interdisciplinary literature. The urban types and global moments that we are covering include colonial/postcolonial cities, industrial/postindustrial cities, socialist/postsocialist cities, Cold War cities, as well as science/smart cities. At stake here is to think about how to (re)write urban history when cities of the global South have increasingly become the sites for us to imagine urban futures. Special attention will also be given to the roles of war, ideology, capital, aesthetics, technology, and ecology in the making urban landscapes and infrastructures.