This course will chart the development of identity within the postcolonial Latin American city. The latter will be read both literally and as a guiding metaphor, as a reality ordered by ideas. We will use interdisciplinary theoretical models as discursive markers, selected from architecture, politics, philosophy, literature, and photography, in order to problematize urban design, the site of real dystopia, as the organizer of symbolic space, and vice versa. Spatio-cultural discussion will focus on the dominant narratives of public topography, most notably that of capitalism, and private, individualized responses to them. Advanced level.