What is a City?  Kakuma’s Answers. 

Our readings in this course have sought to probe fundamental questions of urban theory: what is the nature of a city?  What are its social dynamics and characteristic social forms?  What are the city’s specifically urban processes?  We began our consideration of what a city is by reviewing a typology offered by Lewis Mumford.  Mumford considered a range of perspectives from which one can view the city as an architectural, natural, social, and/or cultural object.

In your final essay, you will use the Kakuma Refugee Camp in north-western Kenya as an entry point to consider the following questions: What is a City?  Is Kakuma Refugee Camp a city?

Begin by watching “A Day in Kakuma Refugee Camp” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z2RzNphJZk) and/or “Refugees Turn Kakuma Camp Into A Permanent Home” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klLD0GTlbSI&nohtml5=False).  These videos will help to give you a sense of life in Kakuma.  Next, read “Refugee camps are the ‘cities of tomorrow’, says humanitarian-aid expert” (http://www.dezeen.com/2015/11/23/refugee-camps-cities-of-tomorrow-killian-kleinschmidt-interview-humanitarian-aid-expert/). 

You will then draw on these two sources, as well as at least three readings from the syllabus, to write an essay discussing the ways in which Kakuma Refugee Camp is (and is not) a city.

If you have difficulty getting started, I have posted a number of (optional) supplemental readings that may help. 

**This essay should be at least 1,500 words in length (though no more than 2,000).  Shorter essays must justify their brevity by their elegance; longer ones must justify their length by the precision of their argument and the clarity of their structure. **