UPL520 URBAN POLITICS IN CENTRAL ASIA
| Course Code: | 8110520 |
| METU Credit (Theoretical-Laboratory hours/week): | 3(3-0) |
| ECTS Credit: | 8.0 |
| Department: | Urban Policy Planning And Local Governments |
| Language of Instruction: | English |
| Level of Study: | Graduate |
| Course Coordinator: | |
| Offered Semester: | Fall and Spring Semesters. |
Course Content
This course focuses on the transition in urban politics and center-local relationship away from Soviet era toward post-Soviet era in the case of Central Asian States. When the Soviet regime collapsed in 1991, the new states in post Soviet geography moved into an ambiguous time of transition. The central Asian states, like other post-Soviet countries, has built its political and administrative system around the creation of a nation state and the adoption of a market-based economy while attempting to address serious socio-cultural problems during the transition era.Urban politics in post-Soviet Central Asia is affected by several conflicts emerged at different scales of the political/economic environment, such as the conflict between the global discourse of decentralization and the central role of the new nation states in the transition to a market-based economy in the absence of capitalist socio-economic relations, which resulted in further centralization. Thus, the primary focus of the course, shortly, consists of an exploration of the conflicts, dynamics, policies and strategies at international, national and local scale related to the urban politics in post-Soviet central Asia.