VGU Urban Development Planning Overview over Modules and ...

Technical University Darmstadt www.urban-studies.de
International
Co-operation
and Urban
Development
Course description
Year One
1 Course identification
2.5.4_A
2 Module 2.5
Conviviality
and culture
3 Name of course Cultural identity and religion
as urban development factors
4 Course instructor Prof. Dr. Shanti Pillai, New York, Auroville, Havana
5 Contents /syllabus 1. Cultural identity is what makes one place different
from another, why residents care for their
neighbourhood and identify with it, what defines
‘home’ to travellers in a globalizing world. The stronger
consumer dependence on internationally marketed
products grow, the meaningful also gets what is left in
terms of own culture to the individual – his or her
traditional roots.
2. The market, however, is not sleeping and invents
new and artificial identities: an apparently private
corner in the global marketplace for example, where
you can buy a fashionable new (and easily
exchangeable) identity and meet an elite that happens
to pick the same group ‘label’. But after all, the
apparent variety of theme pubs, clubs, street parties is
not so much different in the end and may leave a stale
taste behind. Another example: you can find a neat
‘ocean basket’ restaurant all over South Africa and
probably beyond. In all of them, not only the menu is
the same, the taste of the truly ‘decorative’ fish
similarly neutral, and the waiter event greets you with
exactly the same words. It helps some people to feel
‘at home’, too.
3. Inner city renewal or low-income neighbourhood
upgrading schemes may demonstrate good
sustainable results if their specific character can be
valorised and if residents still feel at home after the
2.5.4 Page 1