JGU455H1

Horror Noire: Anti-Blackness and Urban Planning in Cinematic Cities

This course examines the ways urban planning is deeply implicated in anti-black racism through various depictions of “cinematic cities” in film and other popular media. For example, films like Do the Right Thing (Lee, 1989), Love Jones (Witcher, 1997), and Moonlight (Jenkins, 2016) are unimaginable, divorced from their urban settings as shaped by planners and community development policies. In this context, the course explores how cities themselves become important characters in popular media, demonstrating how planning policies are engaged in the racist dynamics of segregation, gentrification and other urban processes. In this conceptual space, engaging cultural studies deepens the pedagogical possibilities of planning—not just in the classroom but in the lifelong learning process of professional practice.