The Bachelorseminar will take place online. Throughout the semester, synchronous and asynchronous teaching units will alternate. Every two to three weeks, there will be synchronous zoom meetings to get to know each other, exchange information and discuss. In the meantime, the students will read texts asynchronously and work on the course-related courseworks.
The details of the course will be discussed online in a zoom meeting on Tuesday, November 3, 2020 from 10.15-11.45. Before the first session, I will send an email with the learnweb and zoom access data to all students registered until then.
Superblogs in Barcelona, car-free city centre in Vienna, bike rental systems in Paris, hybrid buses in London or the reactivation of the railway line to Senden in Münsterland – these are examples of recent transport planning projects. These projects aim to facilitate sustainable mobility policies to meet the challenges of urban development. Current urban developments must on one hand meet the requirements of European and national laws on air pollution control as well as emission reduction and on the other hand address the 'traffic gridlock' in (growing) cities.
The illustrative examples mentioned above are often embedded in 'Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans' (SUMPs) which are certified by the European Commission. Bit by bit SUMPs are replacing the transport development plans of municipalities and counties. This seminar focuses on SUMPs as an instrument and manifestation of multi-level European mobility policy and urban transport planning.
From an International Relation’s perspective, the SUMPs can be considered as cases of norm translation. A norm describes a 'standard of appropriate behaviour for actors with a given identity' (Finnemore and Sikking 1998, 891). The aim of the seminar is to examine European mobility policies from a research-based learning perspective. Students will be encouraged to choose a case (a city/region) and to apply the concept of norm translation to a specific case in a scientific study.
The learning objective is twofold: On the one hand, students will acquire relevant knowledge about European and urban mobility policies, and, on the other hand, familiarize with recent developments in norm research. Using norms as a heuristic, students get the opportunity to apply a theoretical concept to a practical case. At the same time, the seminar offers an introduction to the field of multi-level governance and students learn to recognise and evaluate regional policies as an expression and stimulus for European policy.
The seminar is structured into four units:
1st unit: SUMPs and European Mobility Policy
In this unit, students develop the concept of SUMPs and get involved in European mobility policy.
2nd unit: Cases
Students (possibly in groups) deal with a case which they can choose from a pool of cities (and possibly countries). The aim of this unit is to gain precise knowledge of urban mobility policy, i.e. which stakeholders are involved, how are the processes organised, what resources are available, which departments are responsible in the city, what sustainability goals are associated with it, etc.?
3rd unit: Norms
In this unit, students work on the approach of norm translation in International Relations. Once the concept has been clarified, the focus is on the reception of the approach followed by the joint development of possible operationalisation.
4th unit: Transfer from concept to case
In this unit, the approach of norm translation must be applied to the respective case and analysed empirically. The aim of the analysis is to find out how European mobility policy has been implemented at the urban level, what deviations exist and where regional priorities have been set.
Course Assessment (Studien- und Prüfungsleistungen): Required courseworks (Studienleistungen) in this seminar depend, among other things, on the size of the group of participants and will be adjusted in the first weeks of the seminar if necessary. Units one and two (EU Mobility Policies/SUMPs and Cases) should be concluded with a presentation (if necessary, in a team/group). Unit three (norms) concludes with a memo on operationalisation of the norm (individual). Based on the memos develop in unit three, norms will be applied to the empirical case and presented (in the group). The final assessment (Prüfungsleistung) will be based on a written elaboration (term paper) of the findings presented in unit four according to the respective study regulations.
Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink 1998: International Norm Dynamics and Political Change. International Organization. Vol. 52, No. 4, pp. 887-917 |
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