RESOLVING URBAN CONFLICT

This course explores and applies insights from a variety of academic disciplines to social conflict in urban areas. In addition, in this course we will treat the urban experience as the stage where social conflicts (family, corporate, political, etc.) are experienced and transformed collectively. 

Analyzing and Resolving Urban Conflict explores the contribution that the fields of conflict resolution, human geography, urban studies, and peace and conflict studies can offer to support efforts in lowering violence. This course also seeks to identify and resolve the underlying issues and patterns causing the outbreak and proliferation of violence in cities.

Specifically, the entire world is facing dramatic demographic changes due to the massive movement of people within and across national territories. According to the United Nations, by 2050, two out of every three people are likely to be living in cities or other urban centers. Domestically and internationally, cities are already becoming settings of new social and violent conflicts. We are already witnessing less rural insurgency and more urban insurgency, fewer guerrillas and more gangs and urban militias. In fact, urban areas are becoming the hubs of the transnational flow of commodities and people, of both licit and illicit markets. Cities around the world are increasingly stages where social problems, such as income inequality, racism, and gender-based violence are manifesting and being politically addressed via social movements.   

The course will have an interdisciplinary approach and will draw especially from the fields of anthropology, human geography, and peace and conflict studies. Throughout the course, these disciplines will be in dialogue with systems thinking approaches to analyze and transform social conflicts. In particular, students will also have an opportunity to apply the concepts learned by mapping and analyzing a case study of urban conflict.

Furthermore, the instructor will provide insights, principles and notions he has gained over the years while working as both a practitioner and a scholar in challenging urban environments such as Medellin and Bogotá, Colombia.