Urban Studies

URST 5000. Issues in Urban Studies. (3 Credits)

Required foundation course for M.A. in Urban Studies. Introduces students to current debates in urban studies and to modern urban theory. Themes covered include: immigration, race and ethnicity, urban culture and history, urban sociology, urban planning, city and globalization.

Attributes: DATA, HULI, PMMA, PSIC, PSNM.

URST 5020. Urban Political Processes. (3 Credits)

Examines urban political systems concentrating on the primary institutions and processes that comprise the urban milieu. Focuses on the major theories and approaches that attempt to explain urban politics and urban political systems.

Attributes: INST, ISIN, PMMA, PSIC.

URST 5025. Urban Social Movements. (3 Credits)

This course will introduce students to the interdisciplinary study of urban-based activism. We will examine why cities have been central to the development of protest and resistance, how social movements form, and how they change urban spaces. Using a variety of case studies from ongoing movements over housing rights, labor, immigration, sustainability, and public spaces, it will give students the methodological and conceptual tools to design and carry out studies of urban social movements.

URST 5030. American Suburb: Rise and Fall. (3 Credits)

Examination of 19th Century origins of suburb as counterpoint to the city and the role of nature in shaping the design of this new form of country living. The twentieth century transformation of the suburb into the American dream will be evaluated in light of the reultant sprawl and the policy critiques of this pattern of growth. The class project will involve the design of a sustainable suburb for the 21st century.

Attribute: HIST.

URST 5035. City and Climate Change. (4 Credits)

This course is an examination of the impact of climate change and sea level rise on cities. It covers international examples as well as American cities, with particular focus on the New York metropolitan area. There are weekly readings and discussion. Experts from various interdisciplinary fields form part of the material developed in this course. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attributes: PSEV, PSIC.

Prerequisite: URST 5000.

URST 5040. Urbanism. (3 Credits)

Overview of urban philosophy and urban planning theory in the modern period with emphasis on contemporary scholarship as well as planning methods and techniques. Course scope is international.

Attributes: INST, ISIN.

URST 5045. Informal Cities. (3 Credits)

This course will examine informal organization as it takes place under the impact of political crisis, natural and manmade disasters, and the ongoing crisis of poverty. A variety of sources will be used including written records, films, and imagery.

Attribute: PSIC.

URST 5055. Urban Infrastructures. (3 Credits)

This course will introduce students to the multidisciplinary study of the systems that sustain and connect cities (including transportation, electricity and water, media, digital technologies, and waste management), with a focus on the social and political sides of urban infrastructures. We will examine cases from across the world, with an emphasis on the global South and New York City.

URST 5066. Urban Health and Environment. (3 Credits)

This course will examine the intersection of urban life, the urban environment, individual and community health, and public policy. In doing so, it will examine the evolution of urban public health problems, the urban environment, and the role and responsibility of the political system to respond to individual and communtiy health issues in urban settings. A variety of approaches to the study of urban public policy as well as selected issues from the study of urban public and environmental health will be highlighted.

Attributes: CEED, CETH, ENST, ESEL, PSEV, PSIC.

URST 5070. Environmental History of the American City. (3 Credits)

A survey of New York City's history that emphasizes its changing ecomony, ecology, geography, and society over 400 years. Subjects include the political economy of poverty, the global outreach of New York, its capacity to change the enviroment of other places, and urban redevelopment. Students will conduct preliminary research and prepare a prospectus for a research project.

Attributes: ENST, ESEL, ESHC, PSEV, PSIC.

URST 5080. On the Waterfront: Maritime New York History and Policy. (3 Credits)

This course will explore the rich exchange of goods and people which made New York a "river city," the problematic legacy of that long maritime history, and the complex array of public policy questions that are redifing our relationship to the edge.

URST 5081. Brooklyn Waterfront: The Social Production of Space. (3 Credits)

This course examines the social, economic, ideological, and technological forces that produced the new Brooklyn waterfont. Brooklyn Bridge Park is the case study and focuses on its historic transformation from a ferry landing and the largest private freight terminal in the world into a public waterfront park at the beginning of the 21st century. The course explores the role of public policy, community debates, as well as the historical memory, visual images, and local uses that shaped the new vision of this space. Field work and research at the Brooklyn Historical Society required.

URST 5090. Lincoln Center Arts. (3 Credits)

Considers the performing and visual arts and how they are mediated by the stature of the Lincoln Center complex. Topics include John D. Rockefeller 3rd's dream, the politics and design of the complex, Robert Moses and Lincoln Square, history of the arts in NYC, politics and economics of the arts.

Attribute: PSIC.

URST 5091. Art Communities and Urban Aesthetics. (4 Credits)

This course explores the relationship between art communities and urban spaces through questions such as: Which aspects of urban life affect art and artists? When national politics and economics bear on cities, how does that in turn bear on the art scene? Using “the right to the city” as a framework, we will draw links between neoliberal policies, urban space, and visual culture, with special attention to politically engaged art. Discussions will consider such questions as: Can a local art scene affect the city? Why and how do individual artists organize within a city to develop art or address social problems? We will read about the ways art movements, affected by social and political movements, interact with urban phenomena in several specific cities across the globe, from East Asia, Africa, the Middle East, to the Americas, and from a modest scale, like the capital of Jordan, to "megacities" like Singapore. Readings and documentary films introduce students to modes of cultural engagement and resistance in relation to the urban public sphere, such as establishing alternative art spaces, women's cultural organizations, and art used for protest, as in the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter. In addition to class meetings, students will conduct field visits to art spaces in the New York City, such as art collectives, archives, and galleries. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

Attribute: URSG.

URST 5095. Space, Place, Immigrant Cities. (3 Credits)

This course will introduce students to the main issues and current debates on immigrants in large urban areas in the U.S. Due to their density, cities represent microcosms of interaction and identity formation among and between different groups. This often manifests itself spatially, as certain neighborhodds become cares of residence and teorritorial concentration for immigrants. In the process of settling, immigrants also start identifying strongly with their space of settlement. This course will focus on the contemporary manifestiations of immgirant settlement in cities, while also paying attention to new settlement patterns in reconfigured metropolitan spaces.

Attribute: PSIC.

URST 5140. Themes in Urban Public Policy and Power. (3 Credits)

This course surveys a series of issues and ideas in urban public policy in order to understand why urban actors compete, what power means to them, and what sorts of dynamic policy issues they confront.

Attributes: PMMA, PSIC.

URST 5252. Urban Theory and the Modern City. (3 Credits)

Provides an overview of key theory themes of the 20th/21st American city and explores the modern city at the crossroads of socio political study and interdisciplinary urban research. Themes include city and society, class and urban space, urban poverty, race and culture, diversity in the global city, crisis and conflict, gender and sexuality, sovereignty, just cities, sanctuary cities, and more.

Attribute: PSIC.

URST 5900. Global Cities. (3 Credits)

URST 6080. Urban Studies Fieldwork. (1 to 6 Credits)

Required internship or field research in New York City or another large scale US or foreign city, depending on student interest. Students must have completed 12 credits and received approval from program director to enroll in this course. The field study may be related to the required research project. Maintenance- open enrollment.

URST 6200. Research Skills in Urban Studies. (3 Credits)

Introduces students to urban research methods, setting up research design including derving hypotheses and conclusions and the application of qualitative and quantitative approaches.

Attribute: DATA.

URST 6999. Urban Studies Research. (1 to 4 Credits)

Required research leading to completed master’s thesis or project. It requires completion of 12 units and URST 6080, as well as program approval.

URST 7999. Urban Lab. (4 Credits)

Graduate course with field study component on specific urban topics. Co-taught by faculty across the university and open to all graduate students. Focuses on applied urban research and community engagement. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.

URST 8100. Urban Studies Internship. (0.5 to 6 Credits)

This is an internship course for graduate students working on internships, and for international students working on their Curricular Practical Training (CPT). .5-6 credits.

URST 8999. Independent Study. (1 to 4 Credits)