This course surveys the design challenges of contemporary urbanism. In so doing it focusses upon modern, postmodern, and postcolonial architecture and city planning from several standpoints of critical theory - such as Marxism, feminism, deconstruction, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, as well as the various modernisms and influential reactions to them. To complement the normative dimension of such critiques, interdisciplinary perspectives drawn from urban geography, history, sociology, anthropology, planning theory, and political economy will furnish an account of the social, cultural, political, and economic forces now shaping cities - with an optimistic view to creating alternative visions and forms of urban space.