PLANETARY POLITICS: CITIES, INFRASTRUCTURE AND INTERNATIONAL ORDER - 2025/6

Module Overview

What is international order in the twenty first century? A few short decades have transformed the planet in ways that are only just being understood. A satellite image of the sky at night reveals coastal mega¿cities and inland urban corridors of unprecedented size and scope: new global city networks, mega-city regions and urban corridors have emerged that bring into question traditional state-centric notions of global politics.

Alongside and through these urban patterns run other large technical systems: huge materially integrated physical structures: transport systems, supply chains, air travel networks, submarine Internet cables, satellites, research labs. Onto these systems now map planetary-scaled technologies of computation, generating a new mega-structure comprising smart grids, cloud computing platforms, and sensor nets. This is world order in the twenty first century. Conflict over these infrastructures is part of geopolitical competition and international order building today.

This module builds on cutting edge social theory to introduce students to new ideas about how political order is built at multiple scales. It examines the ways in which China is using infrastructure investment to reshape the Eurasian political and economic order via its Belt and Road Initiative, and how the EU and the US are responding. It examines how global city networks are setting their own global governance agendas, often in parallel to states. It offers new perspectives on the infrastructural dark matter that holds international orders together, and allows them to endure across time and space.

Module provider

Politics & International Relations

Module Leader

CURTIS Simon (Politics IR)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 6

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Semester 1

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

None

Module content

Indicative topics covered in the module include:

The New Infrastructural Geopolitics
New Materialisms: International Relations Theory in the age of the Anthropocene
The Global City and Liberal World Order
Towards the Planetary City
Visions of Chinese World Order
The Belt and Road City
The Planetary Stack: Digital Architectures and International Order
Towards an Ecological Civilisation?
The Splintering of International Order?

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

n/a

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to provide students with the opportunity:

- To demonstrate an understanding of theoretical debates and to analyse and critique them.
- To employ theory to underpin an argument.
- To explore differing relevant theoretical perspectives.
- To utilise relevant material which relates to the arguments they are investigating

Formative assessment and feedback

Students will receive verbal feedback in class concerning their contribution.

Summative assessment

Coursework 1: Policy Brief (2000 words)
The Policy Brief should present a detailed analysis of an issue of your choosing related to the course material. This could be a particular infrastructural development or urban innovation, or a comparison of a number of such developments and innovations across different countries.

Coursework 2: Critical Essay (2500 words)
The Critical Essay is a deeper reflection on the topic and subject matter of the Policy Brief.

It is linked to the Policy Brief, but goes into greater analytical depth on some of the important issues raised in the brief. Where the Policy Brief is intended for a non-academic and professional audience, the critical essay is an academic treatment of that subject

Module aims

• ¿ To build on academic work and knowledge starting from L4 and L5 international relations modules and to introduce students to a more advanced set of theories and concepts relation to International Relations.
• ¿ To introduce students to new ideas about how international relations are changing in an era of planetary processes and entanglements with the natural world.
• ¿ To further develop students' critical understandings of the role and place of theory in order that they can assess its utility to building our understanding of world politics.
• ¿ To develop students' ability to think and reflect critically and to understand the role of perspective in how we see and interpret events.
• ¿ To introduce students to the increasing salience of cities, transnational municipal networks and transnational infrastructures in world politics, and to increase their awareness of the potential politics career paths offered by these developments
• To introduce students to techniques of researching and writing policy relevant reports

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

A two-hour seminar, the remaining time is for independent study comprising guided reading and preparation associated with the seminar, student self-directed reading in the subject area of the module; preparation and production of assessed work.

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: POL3097

Other information

n/a

Programmes this module appears in

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2025/6 academic year.