This is a course designed to give students an introduction to the field of urban studies. We will investigate the historical, social, and economic forces that have shaped cities and city life by reading texts, viewing or listening to multimedia, and conducting fieldwork. Befitting the interdisciplinary character of urban studies, the texts, multimedia, and methods used in the course are drawn from a variety of fields, including history, art history, archaeology, film, sociology, politics, city planning, and journalism.
Although the course is interdisciplinary, its basic framework is that of urban history. For most of the time that humans have existed, there have been no cities and few, if any, permanent settlements. Cities began to appear in Asia a few thousand years ago, and now, according to some estimates, over half of the world’s population lives in an urban place. The United States crossed that threshold decades ago and now is generally considered to be over 80% urbanized. But even when the vast majority of people still lived in rural areas, cities were already crucial to the functioning of complex human societies; they were and are centers of political control and conflict, economic development, religion, education, and creative endeavor.
Using a variety of cities at different times and places, from historical Athens and Jerusalem, to imperial China, to industrial Manchester and Chicago, to our home in 20th- and 21st-century New York, we will explore how urban life has worked for a wide variety of people in a wide variety of conditions. We’ll examine both what cities have looked like (for example, buildings, public spaces, and transport links) and how people have lived in them (for example, work, leisure, and relationships). Our purpose is to try to explain both why and how people from ancient times to the present have founded, built, lived in, and used cities. We’ll thereby gain new perspectives on our own urban existence and begin to predict how cities and urban life might change in the future.
Expected Learning Outcomes
- To gain an appreciation of the multiple disciplinary approaches to studying and understanding cities and urban life
- To critically read and evaluate various types of texts and multimedia
- To understand and critically reflect on theoretical perspectives and academic research
- To describe neighborhood environments quantitatively and qualitatively
- To investigate and understand how local political institutions work
- To develop, conduct, and present an investigation based on a research question
- To effectively communicate ideas in written and oral presentations
