Cultivated City

This class examines the idea and practices of ‘cultivation’ in relation to the challenging environment of the 21st century city. Through field trips, readings and discussions, the class explores the concept of cultivation, and how it can be used as a basis for researching the urban ecology of Shanghai, both as a past and future city. The class incorporates a major project in the digital humanities, in which students use the tools of interactive media (audio, video and cartographic technologies) to research, map and narrativize the ways in which architects, designers, artists and intellectuals engage with the traditions of cultivation in order to imagine and recreate the future metropolis. Cultivated City focuses on Chinese cultural history and its changing attitudes to nature and the environment.