Urban Studies (URBS)

URBS 0002 The City in South Asia

This interdisciplinary social science course examines key topics, themes, and analytic methods in the study of South Asia by focusing on significant South Asian cities. With one-fifth of the worlds population,South Asia and its urban centers are playing an increasingly important role in recent global economic transformations, resulting in fundamental changes within both the subcontinent and the larger world. Drawing primarily on ethnographic studies of South Asia in the context of rapid historical change, the course also incorporates research drawn from urban studies, architecture, political science, and history, as well as fiction and film. Topics include globalization and new economic dynamics in South Asia; the formation of a new urban middle class; consumption and consumer culture; urban political formations, democratic institutions, and practices; criminality & the underworld; population growth, changes in the built environment, and demographic shifts; everyday life in South Asia and ethnic, cultural, and linguistic identities, differences, and violence in South Asia's urban environments. This is an introductory level course appropriate for students with no background in South Asia or for those seeking to better understand South Asia's urban environments in the context of recent globalization and rapid historical changes. No prerequisites. Fulfills College sector requirement in Society and foundational approach in Cross-Cultural Analysis.

Fall or Spring

Also Offered As: ANTH 0002, SAST 0002

1 Course Unit

URBS 0003 Origin and Culture of Cities

The UN estimates that 2.9 of the world's 6.1 billion people live in cities and that this percentage is rapidly increasing in many parts of the world. This course examines urban life and urban problems by providing anthropological perspectives on this distinctive form of human association and land use. First we will examine the "origin" of cities, focusing on several of the places where cities first developed, including Mesopotamia and the Valley of Mexico. We will then investigate the internal structure of non-industrial cities by looking at case studies from around the world and from connections between the cities of the past and the city in which we live and work today.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ANTH 0103, MELC 0003

1 Course Unit

URBS 0005 Poverty and Inequality

What does it mean to live in poverty in the "land of plenty" and experience inequality in the "land of opportunity?" This First-Year Seminar explores these questions and others related to poverty and inequality in contemporary America. The first part of this course focuses on poverty. We will examine topics such as poverty perceptions and measurement, poverty trends, causes of poverty, poverty-related outcomes, and anti poverty policy. The second part of this course focuses on inequality more broadly. We will examine how inequality is defined and what it looks like in the U.S. We will compare the “Haves" and the "Have Nots” and discuss social class, mobility, wealth, and privilege. Lastly, we will explore how different domains (e.g. education, the labor market, health, the justice system) produce, maintain, and reproduce inequalities. Throughout the semester, we will consider the roles of race/ethnicity, gender, age, and place, and how they help deepen our understanding of poverty and inequality.

Fall or Spring

Also Offered As: SOCI 0001

1 Course Unit

URBS 0010 Homelessness & Urban Inequality

This first-year seminar examines the homelessness problem from a variety of scientific and policy perspectives. Contemporary homelessness differs significantly from related conditions of destitute poverty during other eras of our nation's history. Advocates, researchers and policymakers have all played key roles in defining the current problem, measuring its prevalence, and designing interventions to reduce it. The first section of this course examines the definitional and measurement issues, and how they affect our understanding of the scale and composition of the problem. Explanations for homelessness have also been varied, and the second part of the course focuses on examining the merits of some of those explanations, and in particular, the role of the affordable housing crisis. The third section of the course focuses on the dynamics of homelessness, combining evidence from ethnographic studies of how people become homeless and experience homelessness, with quantitative research on the patterns of entry and exit from the condition. The final section of the course turns to the approaches taken by policymakers and advocates to address the problem, and considers the efficacy and quandaries associated with various policy strategies. The course concludes by contemplating the future of homelessness research and public policy.

Fall

Also Offered As: AFRC 0010, SOCI 2940

1 Course Unit

URBS 0050 Ancient Civilizations of the World

This course explores the archaeology (material culture) of early complex societies or civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Aegean. According to the traditional paradigm, civilization first emerged during the fourth millennium BCE in Egypt and Mesopotamia. In the Mediterranean, state-level societies first appeared in Crete and mainland Greece in the early second millennium BCE. This course investigates how and why these civilizations developed, as well as their appearance and structure in the early historic (or literate) phases of their existence. A comparative perspective will illustrate what these early civilizations have in common and the ways in which they are unique. This course will consist largely of lectures which will outline classic archaeological and anthropological theories on state formation, before turning to examine the available archaeological (and textual) data on emerging complexity in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Aegean. This course does not presuppose any knowledge of archaeology or ancient languages; the instructor will provide any background necessary. Because this is a course on material culture, some of the class periods will be spent at the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. These will consist of a guided tour of a relevant gallery, as well as a hands-on object-based lab with archaeological materials selected by the instructor.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ANTH 0105, MELC 0050

1 Course Unit

URBS 0093 Latinx Environmental Justice

This course explores the involvement of the Latinx environmental justice movement since the 1960s. It addresses theories and concepts of environmental racism and environmental justice, underscoring how Latinx have challenged, expanded, and contributed to the environmental justice discourse. In this course, students will explore national case studies of environmental and racial injustice as they bear on Latinx communities both in rural areas and in urban barrios throughout the United States. The course will analyze these case studies through the lens of Latinx artistic and literary texts (essays, paintings, short stories, documentaries, and short films) as they provide a unique historic and multicultural perspective of the Latinx experience with environmental injustice and of how Latinxs imagine alternative transitions and responses to environmental marginalization. In addition, the works of Latinx artists and writers will serve as case studies to deconstruct racial stereotypes of Latinxs as unconcerned about environmental issues, shedding light on how they share a broad engagement with environmental ideas. The case studies analyzed in this course emphasize race and class differences between farmworkers and urban barrio residents and how they affect their respective struggles. The unit on farmworkers will focus on workplace health issues such as toxic chemicals and collective bargaining contracts. The unit on urban barrios will focus on gentrification, affordable housing, and toxic substances in the home. We will also review current and past programs that have been organized to address the aforementioned problems. This is an Academically Based Community Service Course (ABCS course) through which students will learn from and provide support to a Latinx-serving organization in the City of Philadelphia on preventing exposure to hazardous substances, thus bridging the information gap on environmental justice issues in the Latinx community in Philadelphia. Information dissemination and education efforts will be conducted by collaborating with Esperanza Academy Charter School in Philadelphia to implement lessons on preventing exposure to hazardous substances. Studying environmental justice and pairing it with community service will heighten students' awareness of the complexities of culture, race, gender, and class while providing them with an invaluable experience of cross-cultural understanding.

Spring

Also Offered As: ANTH 0930, ENVS 0054, LALS 0093, SPAN 0093

1 Course Unit

URBS 0101 Asian American Communities

Who is Asian American and how and where do we recognize Asian America? This interdisciplinary course explores the multiple factors that define Asian American identity and community. In order to provide a sketch of the multifacted experience of this growing minority group, we will discuss a wide variety of texts from scholarly, artistic, and popular (film, cinematic) sources that mark key moments in the cultural history of Asia America. The course will address major themes of community life including migration history, Asian American as model minority, race, class, and transnational scope of Asian America. In combination with the readings, this class will foster and promote independent research based on site visits to various Asian American communities in Philadelphia and will host community leaders as guest lecturers.

Fall or Spring

Also Offered As: ASAM 0101

1 Course Unit

URBS 0116 American Race: A Philadelphia Story (SNF Paideia Program Course)

This course proposes an examination of race with a three-pronged approach: one that broadly links the study of race in the United States with a multi-disciplinary approach; situates specific conversations within the immediate location of Philadelphia; and examines the international human rights context of race with Greece as a case study. The broad historical examination advances key concepts of race and racialization, explores key theoretical methodologies, and highlights major scholarly works. Students will engage with the study of race through Africana Studies, Asian American Studies, Urban Studies, South Asia Studies, Latin American & Latinx Studies, and through international human rights law. Readings and methodologies will introduce students to critical issues in education, in literature, in sociology, and with methods in oral history, archival work, and ethnography. Most importantly, this extensive approach highlights the impact of race across multiple communities including Black Americans, immigrant populations, Asian Americans, and international communities that are marginalized to emphasize connections, relationships, and shared solidarity. Students are intellectually pushed to see the linkages and the impacts of racism across and among all Americans and from a thematic and legal perspective. As each theme is introduced a direct example from Philadelphia will be discussed. The combination of the national discourse on race, with an intimate perspective from the City of Philadelphia and travel to Greece, engages students both intellectually and civically. The course will be led by Fariha Khan and Fernando Chang-Muy along with local activists with varied disciplinary backgrounds from local community organizations. Each guest lecturer not only brings specific disciplinary expertise, but also varied community engagement experience. This course is a Penn Global Seminar, which includes a travel component. An application is required. For more information and to apply, visit: https://global.upenn.edu/pennabroad/pgs. The course is also supported by the SNF Paideia Program, the Asian American Studies Program and Africana, Latin American & Latinx Studies, Sociology, South Asia Studies, and Urban Studies.

Spring

Also Offered As: AFRC 0116, ASAM 0116, LALS 0116, SAST 0116, SOCI 0116

1 Course Unit

URBS 0171 The Socialist City

This course will explore the ideology and politics of the socialist city in the Soviet Union, East Europe, and the Second World. We will focus on how design professionals, politicians, and residents realized utopian socialist values in the face of national design traditions, local politics, and limited resources. Beginning with the Soviet case, the course will consider how planners and architects addressed modernization, multi-family housing, and neighborhood units in new city plans. We will consider capitals, like Moscow, as well as less well-known regional centers that had strong local identities, such as Tashkent, Belgrade, and Prague. We will examine the state's use of public spaces for commemorations and preservationists' reinterpretation of existing historic sites. In addition, we will consider how everyday residents experienced the socialist city, such as multi-family housing, shopping centers, and subway systems. We will address how citizens circumvented official state channels to obtain state housing and illegally build homes for themselves, sometimes in a folk style. The course will center on Soviet and East European cities, but also address socialist cities in Cuba and Africa whose design was influenced by transnational exchanges. Most broadly, this course explores the question, what was the socialist city? How did its planners, architects, and politicians understand it, and what did they intend to construct? And, what resulted? In the past fifteen years, North American scholars have begun to take seriously the study of the socialist city, and this course draws on the emerging scholarship on this exciting, cross-disciplinary topic. How do scholars understand the socialist city today? We will examine the shared legacies that socialist cities across East Europe shared with their Western European counterparts, as well as the particularities of design that have sparked North American scholars' debates on what distinguished the socialist city from ones that emerged in a capitalist context. In our discussions, we will seek to understand how socialist design professionals understood their work and the emerging cities at the time, as well as how North American scholars view the socialist city today. Disciplinarily, the focus of the call will fall at the intersection of architectural history and politics.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: REES 0171

1 Course Unit

URBS 0180A Music in Urban Spaces

Music in Urban Spaces is a year-long experience that explores the ways in which individuals use music in their everyday lives and how music is used to construct larger social and economic networks that we call culture. We will read the work of musicologists, cultural theorists, urban geographers, sociologists and educators who work to define urban space and the role of music and sound in urban environments, including through music education. While the readings make up our study of the sociology of urban space and the way we use music in everyday life to inform our conversations and the questions we ask, it is within the context of our personal experiences working with music programs in public neighborhood schools serving economically disadvantaged students, that we will begin to formulate our theories of the contested musical micro-cultures of West Philadelphia. This course is over two-semesters where students register for .5 cus each term (for a total of 1 cu over the entire academic year) and is tied to the Music and Social Change Residential Program in Fisher Hassenfeld College House which will sponsor field trips around the city and a final concert for youth to perform here at Penn, if possible. Students are expected to volunteer in music and drama programs in Philadelphia neighborhood public schools throughout the course experience.

Two Term Class, Student must enter first term; credit given after both terms are complete

Also Offered As: MUSC 0180A

0.5 Course Units

URBS 0180B Music in Urban Spaces

Music in Urban Spaces is a year-long experience that explores the ways in which individuals use music in their everyday lives and how music is used to construct larger social and economic networks that we call culture. We will read the work of musicologists, cultural theorists, urban geographers, sociologists and educators who work to define urban space and the role of music and sound in urban environments, including through music education. While the readings make up our study of the sociology of urban space and the way we use music in everyday life to inform our conversations and the questions we ask, it is within the context of our personal experiences working with music programs in public neighborhood schools serving economically disadvantaged students, that we will begin to formulate our theories of the contested musical micro-cultures of West Philadelphia. This course is over two-semesters where students register for .5 cus each term (for a total of 1 cu over the entire academic year) and is tied to the Music and Social Change Residential Program in Fisher Hassenfeld College House which will sponsor field trips around the city and a final concert for youth to perform here at Penn, if possible. Students are expected to volunteer in music and drama programs in Philadelphia neighborhood public schools throughout the course experience.

Two Term Class, Student must enter first term; credit given after both terms are complete

Also Offered As: MUSC 0180B

0.5 Course Units

URBS 0210 The City

Course will focus on Baltimore using The Wire and its sequel, We Own This City, as core texts. Following the trajectory of The Wire, the course will explore the history and development of the city and its institutions with a thematic focus on the impacts of the War on Drugs and policing on Baltimore’s African American community, urban revitalization, violence and community trauma, and the role of the carceral state in American cities.

Spring

Also Offered As: HIST 0810

1 Course Unit

URBS 0248 The Urban Food Chain

This class explores the social, economic, ecological, and cultural dynamics of metropolitan and community food systems in U.S. cities. Field trips and assignments immerse students in various forms of experiential learning - including farming and gardening, cooking, eating, and more. After a broad introduction to global, regional, and urban food systems in our first three weeks, across most of the semester we follow the food chain (or cycle), from production to processing, distribution, cooking, consumption, and waste. Specific topics include urban agriculture, community kitchens, grocery, hunger and food assistance, restaurants, neighborhoods, food cultures, food justice, and community food security. Students will gain broad literacies in: metropolitan and neighborhood food environments; food production, processing, distribution, access, and preparation; and the relationships between food, culture, and society. Students taking this class should be open to trying new things, getting hands dirty, and working with others in various settings and activities.

Fall

1 Course Unit

URBS 0270 The Immigrant City

This course focuses on immigrant communities in United States cities and suburbs. We survey migration and community experiences among a broad range of ethnic groups in different city and suburban neighborhoods. Class readings, discussions, and visits to Philadelphia neighborhoods explore themes including labor markets, commerce, housing, civil society, racial and ethnic relations, integration, refugee resettlement, and local, state, and national immigration policies. The class introduces students to a variety of social science approaches to studying social groups and neighborhoods, including readings in sociology, geography, anthropology, social history, and political science. Ultimately, the class aims to help students develop: 1) a broad knowledge of immigration and its impacts on U.S. cities and regions; 2) a comparative understanding of diverse migrant and receiving communities; and 3) familiarity with policies and institutions that seek to influence immigration and immigrant communities.

Spring

Also Offered As: LALS 0270, SOCI 0270

1 Course Unit

URBS 0318 Abrahamic Faiths & Cultures: Create Community Course

The aim of this course is to design a Middle School curriculum on “Abrahamic Faiths and Cultures” that will subsequently be taught in local public schools. First two hours will be devoted to study and discussion of primary and secondary sources grouped in thematic units. These will explore Jewish, Christian and Islamic teachings on topics including God, worship, religious calendar, life cycle events, attitudes toward religious others; internal historical developments. During the last seminar hour, we will learn from West Philadelphia clergy members, Middle School Social Studies teachers and principals about what they regard as necessary, and incorporate their insights. During the last hour, West Philadelphia clergy members, Middle School Social Studies teachers and principals will share with us what they believe is needed to enable the course to succeed. Class participants will attend prayer services on fieldtrips to a range of West Philadelphia houses of worship. In future semesters, some class participants may teach the resulting curriculum in selected neighborhood schools.

Fall

Also Offered As: MELC 0318, RELS 0318

1 Course Unit

URBS 0335 Investigating the Old 7th Ward

The great scholar and civil rights leader, W.E.B. Du Bois, came to Philadelphia in 1896 to research the Black population of the Seventh Ward. The University of Pennsylvania published his study in 1899 as The Philadelphia Negro. Together, we will study the impact of Du Bois’ work and the relevance to understanding racism, violence, and inequity in Philadelphia today. Taking inspiration from Du Bois’ mixture of research methods and data sources, the course will focus on a range of historical research and digital humanities methods, including oral history, geographic information systems mapping, podcasts, and video. Students will develop new materials for teaching about Du Bois and the Old Seventh Ward and support Philadelphia public school teachers developing and implementing related lessons in K-12 schools.

Fall

1 Course Unit

URBS 1020 Iraq: Ancient Cities and Empires

Iraq: Ancient Cities and Empires is a chronological survey of the ancient civilization that existed in the drainage basin of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers from the early settled village farming communities of the 7th millennium BCE to the middle of the 1st millennium BCE, when Nebuchadnezzar II ruled Babylon and much of the Middle East. Though organized period by period, NELC 241 explores various social, political, economic, and ideological topics, exposing students to various strands of evidence, including settlement survey data, excavated architectural remains, artifacts, and documentary sources, as well as an eclectic mix of theoretical perspectives. The course aims to provide students with a strong foundation for the further study of the ancient and pre-modern Middle East.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ANTH 1020, MELC 1000

1 Course Unit

URBS 1030 Industrial Metropolis

Although we no longer think of most U.S. cities as industrial cities, metropolitan areas today are all products of industrial economies, technologies, and social systems. This course explores the industrialization and deindustrialization of American cities within their evolving global context from the era of European colonization to the present. It includes weekly readings and discussion, regular response papers and walking tours, in- class exercises, and a research paper using primary sources. Themes include energy and ecology, labor and production, inner city and suburban development, globalization, and economic restructuring. Ultimately, the class aims to give students a broad knowledge of 1) the history of industrial capitalism, 2) its effects on cities and regions over the past three centuries, and 3) analytical tools for understanding the past, present, and future of metropolitan economies, geography, and society.

Fall

1 Course Unit

URBS 1050 Metropolis: Culture of the City

An exploration of modern discourses on and of the city. Topics include: the city as site of avant-garde experimentation; technology and culture; the city as embodiment of social order and disorder; traffic and speed; ways of seeing the city; the crowd; city figures such as the detective, the criminal, the flaneur, the dandy; film as the new medium of the city. Special emphasis on Berlin. Readings by, among others, Dickens, Poe, Baudelaire, Rilke, Doeblin, Marx, Engels, Benjamin, Kracauer. Films include Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: CIMS 1050, GRMN 1050

1 Course Unit

URBS 1051 The City in Literature and Film

This course focuses on the central place of the city through the history of cinema. The city in question may change depending on the term this course is being offered. See the English Department's website at www.english.upenn.edu for a description of the current offerings.

Also Offered As: CIMS 1051, ENGL 1951

1 Course Unit

URBS 1060 Race and Ethnic Relations

The course will focus on race and ethnicity in the United States. We begin with a brief history of racial categorization and immigration to the U.S. The course continues by examining a number of topics including racial and ethnic identity, interracial and interethnic friendships and marriage, racial attitudes, mass media images, residential segregation, educational stratification, and labor market outcomes. The course will include discussions of African Americans, Whites, Hispanics, Asian Americans and multiracials.

Fall or Spring

Also Offered As: AFRC 1060, ASAM 1510, LALS 1060, SOCI 1060

1 Course Unit

URBS 1070 Berlin: History, Politics, Culture

What do you know about Berlin's history, architecture, culture, and political life? The present course will offer a survey of the history of Prussia, beginning with the seventeenth century, and the unification of the small towns of Berlin and Koelln to establish a new capital for this country. It will tell the story of Berlin's rising political prominence in the eighteenth century, and its position as a center of the German and Jewish Enlightenment. It will follow Berlin's transformation into an industrial city in the nineteenth century, its rise to metropolis in the early twentieth century, its history during the Third Reich, and the post-war cold war period. The course will conclude its historical survey with a consideration of Berlin's position as a capital in reunified Germany. The historical survey will be supplemented by a study of Berlin's urban structure, its significant architecture from the eighteenth century (i.e. Schinkel) to the nineteenth (new worker's housing, garden suburbs) and twentieth centuries (Bauhaus, Speer designs, postwar rebuilding, GDR housing projects, post-unification building boom). In addition, we will read literary texts about the city, and consider the visual art and music created in and about Berlin, and focus on Berlin's Jewish history. The course will be interdisciplinary with the fields of German Studies, history, history of art, urban studies, and German-Jewish studies. It is also designed as a preparation for undergraduate students who are considering spending a junior semester with the Penn Abroad Program in Berlin.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ARTH 2370, COML 1040, GRMN 1040, HIST 0821

1 Course Unit

URBS 1090 Urban Sociology

This course is a comprehensive introduction to the sociological study of urban areas. This includes more general topics as the rise of cities and theories urbanism, as well as more specific areas of inquiry, including American urbanism, segregation, urban poverty, suburbanization and sprawl, neighborhoods and crime, and immigrant ghettos. The course will also devote significant attention to globalization and the process of urbanization in less developed counties.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: AFRC 1090, LALS 1090, SOCI 1090

1 Course Unit

URBS 1120 Community, Freedom, Violence: Writing the South Asian City

The South Asian city—as space, symbol, and memory—is the subject of this course. Through a range of readings in English and in translation, we will gain a sense for the history of the city and the ways in which it is a setting for protest and nostalgia, social transformation and solitary wandering. We will see reflections of the city in the detective novels sold in its train stations, the stories scribbled in its cafes, and films produced in its backlots. Readings will attempt to address urban spaces across South Asia through a range of works, which we will examine in the context of secondary readings, including histories and ethnological works that take up life in the modern city. Students will finish this course prepared to pursue projects dealing with the urban from multiple disciplinary perspectives. This course is suitable for anyone interested in the culture, society, or literature of South Asia, and assumes no background in South Asian languages.

Fall or Spring

Also Offered As: COML 1121, ENGL 1191, SAST 1120

1 Course Unit

URBS 1150 American Race: A Philadelphia Story (SNF Paideia Program Course)

This course proposes an examination of race with a two-pronged approach: one that broadly links the study of race in the United States with a multi-disciplinary approach and also simultaneously situates specific conversations within the immediate location of Philadelphia, home to the University. The broad historical examination advances key concepts of race and racialization, explores key theoretical methodologies, and highlights major scholarly works. For example, students will engage with the study of race through Africana Studies, Asian American Studies, Urban Studies and through Latin American & Latinx Studies. Readings and methodologies will introduce students to critical issues in education, in literature, in sociology, and with methods in oral history, archival work, and ethnography. Most importantly, this extensive approach highlights the impact of race across multiple communities including Black Americans, immigrant populations, and communities that are marginalized to emphasize connections, relationships, and shared solidarity. Students are intellectually pushed to see the linkages and the impacts of racism across and among all Americans historically and presently. As each theme is introduced a direct example from Philadelphia will be discussed. The combination of the national discourse on race, with an intimate perspective from the City of Philadelphia, engages students both intellectually and civically. The course will be led by Fariha Khan and Fernando Chang-Muy but guest instructors with varied disciplinary backgrounds and guest speakers from local community organizations. Each instructor not only brings specific disciplinary expertise, but also varied community engagement experience.

Spring

Also Offered As: AFRC 1115, ANTH 1150, ASAM 0115, LALS 0115, SAST 1115, SOCI 2976

1 Course Unit

URBS 1151 Comparative Cultures of Resilience and Sustainability in the Netherlands and the United States

Coastal and riverside cities worldwide are under increasing pressure from sea level rise and other effects of climate change. Resilience and sustainability are paradigmatic concepts for the ways in which cities address the effects associated with global warming: sea level rise, extreme weather, changing climate, and their impacts on water, food, energy, and housing. This course focuses on the cultural side of resilience and sustainability in four signature cities: Rotterdam (with areas 6 meters below sea level), Nijmegen (which has devised a new way to live with a major river), New York City (which was devastated by Hurricane Sandy), and New Orleans (one of the most vulnerable American cities). Of course, other cities (Amsterdam, Arnhem, Boston, The Hague, Houston, Miami, etc.) will also come into play. In deeply uncertain times, cities such as these confront an array of interconnected choices that involve not only infrastructural solutions, but priorities, values, and cultural predispositions. Ideally, the strategies that cities devise are generated through inclusive processes based on the understanding that resilience and sustainability should be grounded in the cultural life of their communities. When this is the case, resilience and sustainability can become unique and motivating narratives about how cities and their residents co-develop the kinds of hard, soft, and social infrastructure the climate emergency requires. With this in mind, we will analyze the cities’ climate action plans and resilience strategies; explore their cultural histories relative to flooding events; and consult with Dutch and American experts in climate adaptation, governance, community development, and design. The highlight of the course will be travel to the Netherlands during spring break for site visits and discussions with experts.

Spring

Also Offered As: GRMN 1151

1 Course Unit

URBS 1153 Transformations of Urban America: Making the Unequal Metropolis, 1945 to Today

The course traces the economic, social, and political history of American cities after World War II. It focuses on how the economic problems of the industrial city were compounded by the racial conflicts of the 1950s and 1960s and the fiscal crises of the 1970s. The last part of the course examines the forces that have led to the revitalization and stark inequality of cities in recent years.

Fall or Spring

Also Offered As: HIST 1153

1 Course Unit

URBS 1154 Philadelphia, 1700-2000

Using Philadelphia as a lens, this course will examine the transformation of American cities from the colonial period to the present. Through readings, lectures, and tours, we will consider urbanization and suburbanization, race, class, and ethnicity, economic development, poverty and inequality, housing and neighborhood change, urban institutions, and politics and public policy.

Fall or Spring

Also Offered As: HIST 1154

1 Course Unit

URBS 1155 Fair Housing, Segregation and the Law

This course introduces students to the way sociological theory intersects with and is used to enforce Fair Housing Law. At the end of the semester students will be familiar with various sociological theories that explain patterns of residential segregation in America. Students will learn about various planning and policies that have both reinforced and deepened patterns of segregation as well as various fair housing laws. Students will collaborate with the Advocacy for Racial and Civil Justice Clinic and a community based fair housing group to address a fair housing issue. Students will collect data, gather information, and perform analyses to further a fair housing advocacy effort.

Spring

Also Offered As: SOCI 1150

1 Course Unit

URBS 1170 Media and Popular Culture

This course relies on a variety of sociological perspectives to examine the role of media and popular culture in society, with a particular emphasis on the power of the mass media industry, the relationship between cultural consumption and status, and the social organization of leisure activities from sports to shopping.

Fall or Spring

Also Offered As: SOCI 1070

1 Course Unit

URBS 1310 Small Business Anthropology

With a focus on minority-owned small businesses in the City of Philadelphia, this class will introduce students to the work of anthropologists who have made their careers in the business world using the tools they acquired through training in anthropology. By bringing anthropological perspectives into the workplace, business anthropologists seek to promote well-being for employees and owners, as well as consumers and the communities in which businesses operate. The class will also introduce students to Philadelphia from the point of view of minority owned small businesses. One of the two class days each week will focus on business anthropology as a profession and include readings on organizational culture, design anthropology, and the role of anthropologists in marketing and advertising, as well as in globalization processes and entrepreneurship. The second of the two days each week will focus on the city of Philadelphia and the role of small businesses within it. We will study the spatial layout of the city, the kinds of small businesses that are operative within the city and where they are located, the relationship of business to ethnicity, gentrification and its impact on small business, and the role of government and community groups in relationship to small businesses and their owners and employees. As part of the class, students will engage in guided research on specific small businesses, with the aim of developing an ethnographic understanding of the experiences of owners and employees, the opportunities they have seized upon and the problems they have confronted. We hope in the course of the semester to provide an ethnographic profile of a sampling of small businesses from different industries, which can in turn contribute to understanding larger social and cultural patterns within Philadelphia. Through a class blog or other means, we hope as well to contribute to the ability of minority small business owners to voice their experiences, as well as their fears and hopes for the future, to members of the University community and beyond.

Also Offered As: ANTH 1310

1 Course Unit

URBS 1400 Inequity and Empowerment: Urban Financial Literacy

This course provides students with a rich look at the historical and contemporary factors that have shaped America's wealth gaps. By studying the economic impacts of systemic forces such as discriminatory housing, predatory lending, and unbanking, students will develop a deep financial understanding of today's urban communities. Students will also explore their own financial awareness and exposure, creating personalized financial histories and empowerment plans. By breaking the silence on topics such as credit scores, auto purchases, renting vs. owning a home, insurance, retirement plans, debt management, and investing, Urban Financial Literacy will prepare students for a financially healthy life at Penn and beyond. The course will also explore larger financial examples and case studies, including endowment funds and major foundations, the promises and perils of sports and entertainment, start-ups and the gig economy, and more. In contrasting the opportunity and excess that is possible, with the debilitating realities of intergenerational poverty in America, the idea is that students will end the course with a robust appreciation for financial literacy, a portfolio of practical strategies, and a commitment to create new possibilities for financial wellness.

Fall

1 Course Unit

URBS 1780 Faculty-Student Collaborative Action Seminar in Urban University-Community Rltn

This seminar helps students develop their capacity to solve strategic, real-world problems by working collaboratively in the classroom, on campus, and in the West Philadelphia community. Students develop proposals that demonstrate how a Penn undergraduate education might better empower students to produce, not simply "consume," societally-useful knowledge, as well as to function as caring, contributing citizens of a democratic society. Their proposals help contribute to the improvement of education on campus and in the community, as well as to the improvement of university-community relations. Additionally, students provide college access support at Paul Robeson High School for one hour each week.

Fall or Spring

Also Offered As: AFRC 1780, HIST 0811

1 Course Unit

URBS 2000 Introduction to Urban Research

This course will examine different ways of undertaking urban research. The goal will be to link substantive research questions to appropriate data and research methods. Computer-based quantitative methods, demographic techniques, mapping / GIS and qualitative approaches will be covered in this course. Student assignments will focus on constructing a neighborhood case study of a community experiencing rapid neighborhood change.

Fall or Spring

1 Course Unit

URBS 2020 Urban Education

This seminar focuses on two main questions: 1) How have US schools and urban ones in particular continued to reproduce inequalities rather than ameliorating them? 2) In the informational age, how do the systems affecting education need to change to create more successful and equitable outcomes? The course is designed to bridge the divide between theory and practice. Each class session looks at issues of equity in relation to an area of practice (e.g. lesson design, curriculum planning, fostering positive student identities, classroom management, school funding, policy planning...), while bringing theoretical frames to bear from the fields of education, sociology, anthropology and psychology.

Fall or Spring

1 Course Unit

URBS 2030 Introduction to City Planning: Planning Urban Spaces

This course will provide a general introduction to the concepts and practice of city planning. Topics to be discussed include: the process and nature of planning - theories, methods and roles as manifested in practice; history and trends in city planning; functional planning practice; planning within constraints--a field project; planning in the international arena; present crisis in planning.

Summer Term

1 Course Unit

URBS 2040 Urban Law

This course will focus on selected aspects of urban law that are particularly relevant to areas of high population density. After an introduction to the American judicial system, it will examine the legal issues that arise in the management of land development and use, with special attention to constitutional questions involving equal protection, due process, and the "takings" clause, and routine run-of-the-mill zoning challenges. This course meets the Cultural Diversity requirement.

Fall

1 Course Unit

URBS 2050 People and Design

The built environment of a city is more than a mere backdrop; the design can actually affect people's experiences. Environmental design primarily focuses on the relationship between people and the built environment. It also looks at how the built environment interacts with the natural one (and the potential for greater sustainability). This course will allow students to gain a deeper understanding of how people create, perceive, and use the designed environment. We'll approach these concepts by analyzing design at a variety of scales, from products to interior design to architecture. Finally, using that knowledge, we'll conclude by analyzing urban spaces of the city.

Spring

1 Course Unit

URBS 2060 Public Environment of Cities: An Introduction to the Urban Landscape

This course will explore the role of public spaces - streets, boulevards, parks and squares - in cities and their social uses. With the University of Pennsylvania campus and the City of Philadelphia serving as our laboratory, we will critically examine the evolution of the movement of corridors, open space and buildings of the urban landscape and their changing uses. Following the flaneur tradition of Baudelaire and Benjamin, we will walk the city to experience and understand the myriad environments and neighborhoods that comprise it.

Spring

1 Course Unit

URBS 2090 Neighborhood Dynamics of Crime

Crime varies in time, space and populations as it reflects ecological structures and the routine social interactions that occur in daily life. Concentrations of crime can be found among locations, with antisocial activities like assaults and theft occurring at higher rates because of the demographic make-up of people (e.g. adolescents) or conflicts (e.g. competing gangs), for reasons examined by ecological criminology. Variation in socio-demographic structures (age, education ratios, and the concentration of poverty) and the physical environment (housing segregation, density of bars, street lighting) predicts variations between neighborhoods in the level of crime and disorder. Both ethnographic and quantitative research methods are used to explore the connections between the social and physical environment of areas and antisocial behavior.

Spring

Also Offered As: CRIM 2080

1 Course Unit

URBS 2110 Restorative Justice in the City: History, Theory and Practice (SNF Paideia Program Course)

Restorative Justice (RJ) is a new term to describe ancient ways of dealing with harm and being in community which centers our relationships and obligations to one another, as opposed to punishment and retribution. Increasingly popular as a response to a plethora of urban issues, from mass incarceration to gun violence to education inequality, RJ is also sometimes misunderstood or applied without fidelity. This course explores the theory, history, and practice of RJ in the urban environment. The course intersperses practical communication and facilitation skills, visits from local practitioners and advocates, and in-depth discussion of texts and media. Through readings, discussions, activities, and projects we will develop a solid theoretical basis from which to understand RJ and its implementation, including a focus on holistic engagement with self, other, and community.

1 Course Unit

URBS 2130 Carceral Crisis: The Question of Abolition

The total number of incarcerated peoples in the United States is currently around 2.1 million people, held across various carceral sites – jails, immigration detention centers, and state and federal prisons. If we include all human beings under the direct control of the criminal justice system in the tally, not just the actively incarcerated but those on probation or parole as well, that number swells to approximately eight-million adults, or one person in thirty-seven (Wacquant, 2009). The United States, in both absolute terms and as a percent of its population, is the most aggressive incarcerator of its own citizens in the world. If those under supervision of the criminal justice system were counted as a city population, it would be the second most populous in the country just behind New York City. Currently, one of every six Black men in the United States has been or is currently locked up, and one in three is destined to be at some point in their life. One in six Latinx men will similarly find themselves locked down throughout their life-course. Forty-percent of Black males from the nation’s “hyperghettos” (Wacquant) between the ages of 18 and 35 years-old are under some form of carceral control, and police and prisons are often the primary contact between young Black men and the state. It was within this context that in the summer of 2020, the nation witnessed the extra-legal police executions of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Subsequent civil disobedience actions rocked the country from coast to coast with calls to “defund the police” and “end mass incarceration.” As a result, the notion of police/prison abolition has entered mainstream political discourse to a remarkable degree not witnessed in generations. And its appearance has spawned strident debate across the political spectrum about the viability of police and/or prison abolition, its potential societal effect(s) and/or abolition’s very necessity or even its desirability. The aims of this seminar are twofold. First, we will engage a set of interdisciplinary texts (Sociological, Philosophical, Black Studies, Geographical, Autobiographical, Ethnographic etc.) to develop a broad understanding of that complex set of forces that have transformed the United States into the most rapacious incarcerator of its own citizens of any nation in the global state system. Said straightforwardly, we want to explore the questions: why do we have such a large prison system in the United States and how did it come to be? What work does the prison do on behalf of civil society and why does it deleteriously impact communities of color most profoundly? Secondly, this seminar will work to develop a broad familiarity with abolitionist discourse not only with regards to the questions raised above, but also to develop an understanding of abolitionist perspectives/orientations on what we can, should or even must do about prisons, policing and carcerality – “mass” incarceration - more broadly. In order to realize these contextualizations, this seminar is organized across three larger themes each thinking about “mass” incarceration from a differing vantage - whether external and/or internal to the prison itself: 1. An examination of the political, social, economic and historical forces that have built contemporary carcerality in both ideology and in material fact, 2. A familiarization with abolitionist perspectives on “what must be done” to challenge racialized “mass” incarceration as well as abolitionists’ critique of mainstream political proposals on police and/or prison reform, and 3. An analysis of the carceral interior through the politicized writings of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated abolitionist thinkers as well as those scholars who take the culture/institutions internal to the prison as proper site for abolitionist intervention.

Spring

Also Offered As: AFRC 2130, SOCI 2908

1 Course Unit

URBS 2160 Social Entrepreneurship

Amidst perceptions that public sector and philanthropic support for local communities is increasingly scarce, many community development practitioners are turning to social enterprise as a means to improve social and economic conditions in their neighborhoods. This course will do a deep dive into the segment of social enterprises addressing workforce development and job creation challenges, especially as they relate to returning citizens and other vulnerable adults, including several planned field visits. Building on their understanding of these fields, students will then divide into groups for a hands-on course project.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

URBS 2190 The Heart of Social Change

The Heart of Social Change: Experiments in Urban Development, Activism, and Social Entrepreneurship will seek to challenge those who desire to work for social change to consider how they may not only employ their heads and their hands, but also their hearts as they work to improve the aspects of contemporary society that mean the most to them. This seminar-based class will examine past and contemporary examples of heart-based activism, urban development and social entrepreneurship yet it will also be a space where students will be asked to experiment with ways that they too may be change agents.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

URBS 2410 Metropolitan Growth and Poverty

This course analyzes the role of metropolitan regions in the U.S. and global economies, including the sources of metropolitan productivity, the ways that metropolitan structures affect residents, and analyses of public policy in metropolitan areas. The economic, political, and social forces that have shaped World War II urban and regional development are explored, including technology, demography, and government. Special attention is paid to how metropolitan change affects residents by income and race. Topics include: gentrification, schools, suburbanization, sprawl, metropolitan fragmentation, concentration of poverty, race, and various economic revitalization initiatives.

Fall or Spring

Also Offered As: SOCI 2410

1 Course Unit

URBS 2445 Civil Dialogue Seminar: Civic Engagement In A Divided Nation

The goal of this course is to help students develop concepts, tools, dispositions, and skills that will help them engage productively in the ongoing experiment of American democracy. This nation's founders created a governmental structure that sets up an ongoing and expansive conversation about how to manage the tensions and tradeoffs between competing values and notions of the public good. These tensions can never be fully resolved or eliminated; they are intrinsic to the American experiment. Every generation must struggle to find its own balance, in no small part because in every era people who previously had been unjustly excluded from the conversation find a way to be heard. That inevitably introduces new values and changes how enduring ones get interpreted. The challenge of each generation is to develop that capacity to its fullest. The goal of this course is to equip you to engage fully in your generation's renewal of the conversation. Class sessions will use a variety of modalities: lecture, discussion, case studies, opportunities to experiment with the tools and techniques of civil dialogue and writing. Each session will include some theory or historical context, a case study, exploration of a key concept of civic dialogue with a related tool or technique, and an interactive exercise. This course is part of a larger effort by the university (called the Paideia program) to help Penn students build these skills

Fall or Spring

Also Offered As: COMM 2445, EDUC 2445

1 Course Unit

URBS 2450 Poverty, Race and Health

This course is designed to introduce students to current literature on race/ethnic difference in health and mortality in the United States, covering such topics as explanations for why some race/ethnic groups fare better than others, how inner city poverty and residential segregation may contribute to racial/ethnic differences in health outcomes, and health of immigrants versus native-born populations. Current policy debated and recent policy developments related to health are also briefly discussed. The course is organized as a seminar with a combination of lectures and class discussions.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: SOCI 2450

1 Course Unit

URBS 2500 Urban Public Policy: Philadelphia -- A Case Study

An introduction to a broad range of substantive policy areas affecting the city, and an exploration into the complexities of policy formulation and implementation in a large and pluralistic metropolitan setting. The course subtitle, "Philadelphia -- A Case Study," describes our approach. Donna Cooper leads the region's foremost child advocacy organization focused on poverty, child welfare and education issues, she formerly served as the Deputy Mayor for Policy for the City of Philadelphia, and Secretary of Policy of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Fall or Spring

1 Course Unit

URBS 2501 Cities in Chinese History

This seminar will study the development of Chinese cities over the past two millennia with respect to their spatial structure, social constitution, economic system, political functions, and cultural representation (including cityscape paintings, maps, and films).As China transitioned from a collection of city-states to a united empire to nation state, Chinese urbanism underwent transformations as drastic as those of the country itself. Cities, which serve as a critical mechanism for the operation of a vast agrarian empire/nation like China , offer a unique vantage point for us to observe and analyze the continuities and discontinuities between dynastic empires as well as the radical transition from empire to modern nation state. Topics include: the city-state system in ancient China; the creation and evolution of imperial capitals; the medieval urban revolution and the subsequent collapse of classic city plans; the development of urban public sphere/public space in late imperial China; the rise of commercial power in urban politics; the negotiation of urban class and gender relations via cultural consumption; the role of cities in the building of a modern Chinese nation state; the anti-city experiment under the communist regime; urban citizenship in the reform era; as well as the expanding urbanization and shifting urbanism of Greater China as reflected in cinematic representations of Shanghai, Hongkong, and Taipei.

Fall or Spring

Also Offered As: EALC 2722, HIST 2501

1 Course Unit

URBS 2520 Urban Journalism

Powerful forces are rocking journalism. Newspapers and networks are battling financial woes along with blizzards of misinformation and mistrust. But it's an exciting time, too. Independent news outlets are blossoming. Newsrooms are heeding calls for diversity and inclusion. And one teenager's video not only broke news -- it changed history. This course will examine some of those forces and offer direct experience in urban journalism. Students will report and write stories about Philadelphians' lives. Involvement in The Daily Pennsylvanian or other news outlets is encouraged -- let's get you published!

Spring

1 Course Unit

URBS 2530 Cities, Suburbs, Regions

This course will explore the political, economic, social, and demographic forces impacting development patterns in metropolitan areas, with a particular focus on Philadelphia. We will examine the government policies, economic forces, and social attitudes that affect the way a region grows, and the impact of these forces on poverty, equity and segregation. Specific topics to be discussed include the factors that make a region competitive, the city's changing role in the region, the impact place has on opportunity, and approaches to revitalizing and improving communities.

Spring, even numbered years only

Also Offered As: SOCI 2942

1 Course Unit

URBS 2580 Global Urban Education

This course examines the demographic, social, and economic trends impacting the growth of global cities--providing the context for global urban education. Through the dual lens of globalization and local urban culture, we explore relationships between urban education and economic development, democratic citizenship, social movements, social inclusion, equity, and quality of urban life. We consider key historical legacies (e.g., Colonialism), informal settlements and "slums," the rise of the "knowledge economy", and the role of international aid. Additional topics include: early childhood; gender equity; youth culture; impacts of crisis and war; urban refugees; teacher training and identity; accountability & governance; information & computer technology; religion, indigenous cultures, and language identity; & the role of the private sector and school choice. We focus on cities like Sao Paolo, Mexico City, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City, Johannesburg, Lagos, Nairobi, Jakarta, Mumbai, Lahore, Tehran, and Cairo, and draw comparisons to cities like New York, London, Paris and Tokyo.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: SOCI 2943

1 Course Unit

URBS 2590 Nutritional Anthropology

The course is an introduction to nutritional anthropology, an area of anthropology concerned with human nutrition and food systems in social, cultural and historical contexts. On the one hand, nutritional anthropologists study the significance of the food quest in terms of survival and health. On the other hand, they also know that people eat food for a variety of reasons that may have little, if anything, to do with nutrition, health, or survival. While the availability of food is dependent upon the physical environment, food production systems, and economic resources, food choice and the strategies human groups employ to gain access to and distribute food are deeply embedded in specific cultural patterns, social relationships, and political and economic systems. Thus, nutritional anthropology represents the interface between anthropology and the nutritional sciences, and as such, can provide powerful insights into the interactions of social and biological factors in the context of the nutritional health of individuals and populations. Because food and nutrition are quintessential biocultural issues, the course takes a biocultural approach drawing on perspectives from biological, socio-cultural and political-economic anthropology. Course content will include: a discussion of approaches to nutritional anthropology; basics of human nutrition; food systems, food behaviors and ideas; methods of dietary and nutritional assessment; and a series of case studies addressing causes and consequences to nutritional problems across the world.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ANTH 2590, LALS 2590

1 Course Unit

URBS 2600 Asian American Food

You are what you eat. Asian American Food explores the history, politics, and ethnic identity of food through a cultural lens. Growing food, eating, and sharing meals serve as intimate expressions of self and community. By examining the production and consumption of food, the course investigates the ways that Asian Americans navigate traditions, gender norms, religious dietary laws, food habits, and employment as they create lives in the United States. The course overviews the history of Asian American foodways, but has a particular focus on Philadelphia's Asian American communities.

Spring

Also Offered As: ASAM 2600, SAST 2600

1 Course Unit

URBS 2760 The Modern City

A study of the European and American city in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Emphasis is placed on the history of architecture and urban design; political, sociological, and economic factors also receive attention. The class considers the development of London, St. Petersburg, Washington, Boston, Paris, Vienna and Philadelphia.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ARTH 2700

1 Course Unit

URBS 2770 Gender, Sex & Urban Life: The City as a Feminist/Queer/Trans Archive

How does the city shape our experience of gender and sexuality? How do women, non-binary, queer, and trans subjects inhabit and transform urban space? In this course, we will think about the city as an archive of feminist, queer, and trans communities, activism, and intimate life. Course sessions will be divided into two types – the first, in-class discussions of key theoretical and historical texts exploring how gender and sexuality inform, and are informed by, the design of cities around the globe. Second, we will engage Philadelphia itself as a repository of queer/feminist/trans life through experiential learning activities – from walking tours to archive and institution visits. During the experiential part of the course, we will experiment with embodied methods for interpreting the city, including autoethnography, poetry, critical essay writing, visual representation (collage, photography, design proposals, zine-making), oral history, sound capturing/production, and more. Interdisciplinary in nature, the course will draw from urban history, feminist, queer, and trans theory, architectural and planning theory, and geography, as well as from fiction, poetry, art and film.

Spring

Also Offered As: GSWS 2770

1 Course Unit

URBS 2810 The US Criminal Justice System in Urban Context

With over two million Americans behind bars and over seven million under some form of state supervision, the United States leads the world in incarceration. From an interdisciplinary perspective, this course will examine the special attention given to how penal issues--including the recent prison boom and the privatization of prison, white supremacy and the racial disparity of the inmate population, juvenile criminal justice, alternative sentencing, prisoner health, and the punishment of military veterans, immigrants, and women in prisons--impact urban communities and contexts. Students will hear from guest speakers who were formerly incarcerated, and attend a field trip to a facility to see first-hand examples of the criminal justice system.

Spring

1 Course Unit

URBS 2850 Health on the urban margins: The experience of health in American cities

In this course we will investigate the social and spatial determinants of health in contemporary urban American. We will study how cities are impacted by healthcare delivery systems and social policy in the United States, with special attention toward understanding the relationship between health disparities and structures of urban inequality related to racial discrimination, extreme poverty, and the stigma of a criminal record. We will also explore how a variety of marginalized populations from war veterans to parolees to the homeless cope with mental illness and violence-related trauma in the urban environment.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

URBS 2900 Metropolitan Nature

In order to understand the complex and often skewed relationship between the built and natural systems, we must think in processes and examine different scales simultaneously. The course explores urban sustainability and resilience. At its core, sustainability is a radical concept that integrates the economy, equity (social justice), and the environment. Co-opted by marketing slogans, stripped of meaning and context, it has become vague and pliable. Sustainability and resilience demand a holistic systems view of the world. The course focuses on communities such as New Orleans and Eastwick where urban development has focused on economic concerns at the expense of the environment and equity resulting in unintended, and sometimes, catastrophic consequences. Students will have the opportunity to interact with community residents who have organized to develop strategies to address these ongoing issues.

Fall

1 Course Unit

URBS 2940 Global Cities: Urbanization in the Global South

This course examines the futures of urbanization in most of the world. With cities in "developing" countries set to absorb 95% of urban population growth in the next generation, the course explores the plans, spaces and social experiences of this dramatic urban century. How do proliferating urban populations sustain themselves in the cities of Latin America, Africa and Asia? What kinds of social and political claims do these populations make more just and sustainable cities? The course investigates the ongoing experiences in urban planning, infrastructure development and environmental governance in cities of the Global South. In so doing, it imagines new forms of citizenship, development and sustainability that are currently unfolding in these cities of the future.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ANTH 2940

1 Course Unit

URBS 2950 Palermo: Urban Migration, the Built Environment, and Global Justice

This City Seminar sponsored by Penn’s Humanities+Urbanism+Design initiative explores Palermo, Italy, its migrant communities, built environment, and related questions of justice. In the first half of the semester, we will survey Palermo’s long history as one of the most “conquered” cities in the world, tracing different empires and peoples’ impacts on the city, its social life and built environment, to its recent history as a “sanctuary city” and center of diverse communities from Africa, Asia, and Europe. The class will travel to Palermo during the week of fall break, documenting the built environments of historic and contemporary immigrant neighborhoods, and meeting with leaders of city government, immigrant rights movements, and migrant community associations. Assisted by “cultural mediators” from various communities, students will produce case studies of different migrant communities, their civil society organizations, and the recent impacts they have had on the city and its built environment. Leaders of Palermo’s elected migrants’ city council, the Consulta delle Culture, will be our partners in this class and its engagement with migrant communities. During the second half of the semester, we will continue to explore contemporary topics related to migration, the built environment, and social justice in the city while students work to develop their case studies, which we will publish at the end of the semester on a web site that we build together.

Also Offered As: ITAL 2950

Mutually Exclusive: URBS 2952

1 Course Unit

URBS 2952 Palermo: Empires, Mafia, and Migration

This seminar explores the history and contemporary experiences of migrant communities in Palermo, Sicily. Palermo is an important site to consider critical questions about diversity and intercultural relations, power, exploitation and opportunities for migrants, city and imperial or national politics of migration, among other important questions about migration, migrant communities, and cities. Today the fifth largest city in Italy, it was founded by Phoenician traders and over time has been one of the most “conquered” cities in the world, ruled by Carthaginians, Romans, Goths, Arabs, Normans, Germans, French, Spanish, briefly the British and Americans, and since 1860 the nation of Italy. It was also home to Greeks, Jews, and other migrants, and to slaves of various races and ethnicities. Since the mid-19th century, the province of Palermo has been the center of the Sicilian mafia, which continues to influence emigration from Sicily and the work, housing, and lives of many migrants there today. Palermo is a diverse city, with people from North and West Africa, South and East and other parts of Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, largely residing in its historic center. In the 21st century, it has been one of most welcoming cities in the world, a sanctuary city in some ways, though city politics are changing. Migrant leaders long involved in city government and civil society will be our partners in this class, helping us engage with migrant communities. The class trip over spring break will include visits to and assignments exploring historic sites and museums related to migration and contemporary migrant neighborhoods, shops, and organizations with a cultural mediator from the community.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ITAL 2952

Mutually Exclusive: URBS 2950

1 Course Unit

URBS 2970 Nature Culture Environmentalism

Water wars, deforestation, climate change. Amidst many uncertain crises, in this course we will explore the emergent relationship between people and the environment in different parts of the world. How do people access the resources they need to live? How, when and for whom does 'nature' come to matter? Why does it matter? And what analytical tools we might use to think, mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change? Drawing together classical anthropological texts and some of the emergent debates in the field of climate studies and environmental justice, in this class we focus on the social-ecological processes through which different groups of humans imagine, produce and inhabit anthropogenic environments.

Fall

Also Offered As: ANTH 2970, SAST 2970

1 Course Unit

URBS 2999 Independent Study

Specialized topics in Urban Studies. This course may be taken by permit only, once a faculty advisor has agreed to be the professor of record, and the scope of work has been approved in advance by the department.

1 Course Unit

URBS 3000 Fieldwork Seminar

Students work 15 hours per week in field placement and meet weekly with class and instructors. The class is intended to help students reflect from a variety of perspectives on the work that they are doing in their placement organizations. The class format is primarily discussion. Students are required to complete assigned readings, prepare written and oral presentations, and submit a final project.

Spring

2 Course Units

URBS 3050 Housing, Race, and Community in the United States

One's home is the first site of self-identity, socialization, and notions of citizenship. In the United States, neighborhoods are the basic units of political organization, educational options, and familial wealth. This course explores the intersections between race and housing in the United States with a specific focus on the experiences of African-Americans in urban centers. The intersectional housing experiences of Asian, Latinx, first-generation immigrants, Arab, and indigenous communities will also be analyzed. This course represents both a timely and nuanced opportunity to address housing as a focal point of existing racial tensions and deepening socio-economic inequalities in the U.S. Increasingly, housing has become a contested subject, with heated debates concerning its status as a human, and potentially constitutional, right. Students will explore urban governance values, the commodification of urban landscapes, and the institutional dimensions of race in the United States. Students will develop a critical understanding of the underlying structural causation for the issues faced by minority populations seeking adequate, affordable, and safe housing in the U.S. Prior knowledge of urban planning, housing, or social policy is not necessary for this course. Students will finish the course equipped with a broad knowledge base of associated development topics including globalization, commodification, and social justice.

Spring

Also Offered As: AFRC 3051

1 Course Unit

URBS 3120 Stigmatized Heros: U.S. Veterans (SNF Paideia Program Course)

Drawing from interdisciplinary scholarship in the fields of sociology, history, psychology, psychiatry, and public health, this course interrogates the identity of vulnerable veterans (veterans who are incarcerated, homeless, or struggling with suicidal ideation). The course focuses on justice-involved veterans who are at the nexus of two of the United States largest, most powerful, and well-funded institutions—the criminal justice system and the military. “Sweet is war to those who have never experienced it,” states the Latin proverb. Central to the curriculum is this very disconnect, between those who have experienced war and those who have not. In addition to communing with veterans, we will analyze popular depictions of war, veterans, violence, and prisons in order to assess how military members, justice-involved people, and survivors of violence are understood in the public imagination versus how they in fact understand themselves and their realities. Students will have in-person dialog with both official and lay experts, including clinicians, veterans, military members, chaplains, and incarcerated people. Students will attend workshops at both the VA and a state prison.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

URBS 3140 Participatory Cities (SNF Paideia Program Course)

What is a participatory city? What has that term meant in the past, what does it mean now, and what will it mean going forward? Against the backdrop of increasing inequality and inequity, and the rise in a search for solutions, what role can citizens play in co-creating more just cities and neighborhoods? How can citizens be engaged in the decision-making processes about the places where we live, work, and play? And most importantly, how can we work to make sure that all kinds of voices are meaningfully included, and that historically muted voices are elevated to help pave a better path forward? This course will connect theory with praxis as we explore together the history, challenges, methods, and approaches, and impact of bottom up and top down approaches to community participation and stakeholder involvement in cities. Multiple opportunities will be provided to be involved in community engagement work for live projects in Philadelphia.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: SOCI 2960

1 Course Unit

URBS 3200 Who Gets Elected and Why? The Science of Politics

What does it take to get elected to office? What are the key elements of a successful political campaign? What are the crucial issues guiding campaigns and elections in the U.S. at the beginning of the 21st century? This class will address the process and results of electoral politics at the local, state, and federal levels. Course participants will study the stages and strategies of running for public office and will discuss the various influences on getting elected, including: Campaign finance and fundraising, demographics, polling, the media, staffing, economics, and party organization. Each week we will be joined by guest speakers who are nationally recognized professionals, with expertise in different areas of the campaign and election process. Students will also analyze campaign case studies and the career of the instructor himself. Edward G. Rendell is the former Mayor of Philadelphia, former Chair of the Democratic National Committee, and former Governor of Pennsylvania.

Fall

Also Offered As: PSCI 1207

1 Course Unit

URBS 3230 Tutoring School: Theory and Practic

This course represents an opportunity for students to participate in academically-based community service involving tutoring in a West Phila. public school. This course will serve a need for those students who are already tutoring through the West Phila.Tutoring Project or other campus tutoring. It will also be available to individuals who are interested in tutoring for the first time.

Spring

Also Offered As: EDUC 3123

1 Course Unit

URBS 3260 Tutoring in Urban Public Elementary Schools: A Child Development Perspective

The course provides an opportunity for undergraduate students to participate in academically based community service learning. Student will be studying early childhood development and learning while providing direct, one-to-one tutoring services to young students in Philadelphia public elementary schools. The course will cover foundational dimensions of the cognitive and social development of preschool and elementary school students from a multicultural perspective. The course will place a special emphasis on the multiple contexts that influence children's development and learning and how aspects of classroom environment (i.e., curriculum and classroom management strategies) can impact children's achievement. Also, student will consider a range of larger issues impacting urban education embedded in American society. The course structure has three major components: (1) lecture related directly to readings on early childhood development and key observation and listening skills necessary for effective tutoring, (2) weekly contact with a preschool or elementary school student as a volunteer tutor and active consideration of how to enhance the student learning, and (3) discussion and reflection of personal and societal issues related to being a volunteer tutor in a large urban public school.

Fall

Also Offered As: EDUC 3726

1 Course Unit

URBS 3300 GIS Applications in Social Science

This course will introduce students to the principles behind Geographic Information Science and applications of (GIS) in the social sciences. Examples of GIS applications in social services, public health, criminology, real estate, environmental justice, education, history, and urban studies will be used to illustrate how GIS integrates, displays, and facilitates analysis of spatial data through maps and descriptive statistics. Students will learn to create data sets through primary and secondary data collection, map their own data, and create maps to answer research questions. The course will consist of a combination of lecture and lab.

Fall

1 Course Unit

URBS 3350 Investigating the Old 7th Ward

The great scholar and civil rights leader, W.E.B. Du Bois, came to Philadelphia in 1896 to research the Black population of the Seventh Ward. The University of Pennsylvania published his study in 1899 as The Philadelphia Negro. Through this seminar-style class, students will study the impact of Du Bois’ work then as well as its enduring impact and legacy for urban studies, sociology, public health, and social work. Taking inspiration from Du Bois’ mixture of research methods and data sources, the course will focus on a range of historical research and digital humanities methods, including oral history, geographic information systems mapping, podcasts, video, augmented reality, visualization, and gaming. Students will develop skills in one or more of these methods and develop new materials for teaching about Du Bois and the Old Seventh Ward through a public history project and high school curriculum. There are no prerequisites for this course, but it is recommended that you have either already taken URBS 2000 (Intro to Urban Research), or have experience with ArcGIS.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

URBS 3424 Political Ecologies of the City

Cities have been centres of aspiration for much of human history. They have provided a limited yet critical locus for social mobility, both in political and economic terms. As large agglomerations of political and economic power, urban residents have also consumed growing proportions of the earths mineral, food and water resources from the national (and international) body. The contradictory aspects of urban aspiration frame this course. Drawing on the frameworks of political ecology, in this course we think through the cities of the global south to understand how cities are made. To do this, we will first focus on the construction on the liberal city and how it has been occupied, both formally and informally, by urban subjects in most of the world. Next, we will learn about projects through which natural resources have been directed to and through the city. Finally we will conclude with a particular attention to how urban resources are claimed by marginalized migrants, and the particular sorts of governance institutions these practices engender.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ANTH 3424

Mutually Exclusive: ANTH 5424

1 Course Unit

URBS 3500 Cities and Stories

So much of what we know about cities comes from the stories we tell about them. This course takes the-city-in-stories as both our subject and our muse. We will work across genres and disciplines, reading a mix of fiction and nonfiction in which cities figure prominently, from Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities to Sarah Broom's Yellow House. We'll go from Mumbai, in Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers, to Oakland, in Tommy Orange's There There. With each text, we'll examine how the city is represented, including what and who we see and don't see, and the role it plays in the narrative. We'll also explore the author's craft and write our own creative nonfiction about city streets and neighborhoods. The class will be part discussion-based seminar and part peer-review writing workshop. It is open to both creative writing and urban studies students excited to explore the intersections between our stories, our cities, and ourselves.

Spring

Also Offered As: ENGL 3513

1 Course Unit

URBS 3705 Jews and the City

Jews have always been an extraordinarily urban people. This seminar explores various aspects of the Jewish encounter with the city, examining the ways that Jewish culture has been shaped by and has helped to shape urban culture. We will examine European and American cities as well as some in Palestine/Israel, covering an expansive view of urban culture. We will consider Jewish involvement in political and cultural life, the various neighborhoods in which Jews have lived, relations with other ethnic groups, as well as many other topics. We will read some classic works in the field along with contemporary scholarship. No prior background in Jewish history is required. *This course may be applied toward the US, European, or Middle East requirements for the History Major or Minor, depending upon the research paper topic. Students must consult with the instructor to determine which geographic requirement will be fulfilled.*

Fall or Spring

Also Offered As: HIST 3705, JWST 3705

1 Course Unit

URBS 3782 Local Media

We may be tethered to global networks, streaming content from around the planet, joining in conversation (or conspiracy) with folks from all corners of the earth, but we also live in places with local characters and concerns, among people with local needs and contributions. What happens when we lose the local media — the newspapers and broadcast outlets — that bind and inform our localized communities? In this course we’ll consider the important roles served by our place-based media, as well as what’s lost when our local modes of communication collapse. But we’ll also consider what might be gained if we think more generously about what constitutes local media — and if we imagine how they might be redesigned to better serve our communities, our broader society, and our planet. Through readings, listening and screening exercises, occasional in-class field trips and guest speakers, and low-barrier-to-entry in-class labs, we’ll study local news; local book cultures, including libraries and bookshops and independent printers; local music scenes, including performance venues and record shops and music reviewers; local infrastructures of connection and distribution, including post offices and community digital networks; local data creators and collectors; local signage and interactive public media; local emergency communication resources; local whisper networks and town gossip; and a selection of other case studies that reflect students’ interests. Because this new course is still in development, the assignments haven’t yet been finalized — but students can tentatively expect to write one or two short papers; share one low-pressure in-class presentation; participate in a few small (and ideally enjoyable) design workshops and group exercises; and, in lieu of a final exam, contribute a written or creative piece to a collective class publication, perhaps a local media field guide that we’ll design and publish in collaboration with local makers.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ARTH 3782, CIMS 3782, ENGL 2982

1 Course Unit

URBS 3930 Latinx Environmental Justice

This course explores the involvement of the Latinx environmental justice movement since the 1960s. It addresses theories and concepts of environmental racism and environmental justice, underscoring how Latinx have challenged, expanded, and contributed to the environmental justice discourse. In this course, students will explore national case studies of environmental and racial injustice as they bear on Latinx communities both in rural areas and in urban barrios throughout the United States. The course will analyze these case studies through the lens of Latinx artistic and literary texts (essays, paintings, short stories, documentaries, and short films) as they provide a unique historic and multicultural perspective of the Latinx experience with environmental injustice and of how Latinxs imagine alternative transitions and responses to environmental marginalization. In addition, the works of Latinx artists and writers will serve as case studies to deconstruct racial stereotypes of Latinxs as unconcerned about environmental issues, shedding light on how they share a broad engagement with environmental ideas. The case studies analyzed in this course emphasize race and class differences between farmworkers and urban barrio residents and how they affect their respective struggles. The unit on farmworkers will focus on workplace health issues such as toxic chemicals and collective bargaining contracts. The unit on urban barrios will focus on gentrification, affordable housing, and toxic substances in the home. We will also review current and past programs that have been organized to address the aforementioned problems. This is an Academically Based Community Service Course (ABCS course) through which students will learn from and provide support to a Latinx-serving organization in the City of Philadelphia on preventing exposure to hazardous substances, thus bridging the information gap on environmental justice issues in the Latinx community in Philadelphia. Information dissemination and education efforts will be conducted by collaborating with Esperanza Academy Charter School in Philadelphia to implement lessons on preventing exposure to hazardous substances. Studying environmental justice and pairing it with community service will heighten students' awareness of the complexities of culture, race, gender, and class while providing them with an invaluable experience of cross-cultural understanding.

Spring

Also Offered As: ANTH 3930, ENVS 3445, LALS 3930, SPAN 3930

Prerequisite: SPAN 1800 AND SPAN 1900

1 Course Unit

URBS 3999 Independent Study

Specialized topics in Urban Studies. This course may be taken by permit only, once a faculty advisor has agreed to be the professor of record, and the scope of work has been approved in advance by the department.

1 Course Unit

URBS 4000 Senior Seminar

Urban Studies senior research project

Fall

Prerequisite: URBS 2000 AND URBS 3000

1 Course Unit

URBS 4010 Urban Studies Honors

Students in the fall Urban Studies Senior Seminar (URBS400) whose papers are exceptional and show promise for publication will be invited to participate in the spring honors seminar. If they choose to participate, honors seminar participants will revise and refine their research/papers with the goal of their work for publication in an academic journal relevant to the topic. The seminar meets periodically during the semester, structured around a set of assignments geared to facilitate the process of revision. Students will be assigned to read each other's work and meetings take the form of a workshop with students reporting on progress and providing feedback to improve and develop each other's papers. In addition to completing the revised paper for a grade, participants in the honors seminar are required to present their work to a wider Urban Studies audience in a special session at the end of the semester and to provide documentation that they have submitted their papers for publication. Students who successfully complete the honors seminar will graduate with distinction in the major, noted on their transcripts and in the graduation materials.

Spring

Prerequisite: URBS 4000

1 Course Unit

URBS 4040 Philanthropy and the City

This course will focus on how urban communities are shaped by the nonprofit sector and the billions of philanthropic dollars that fuel their work. By bridging theory and practice, the class explores what dynamics are at play to deliver vital services or programs in healthcare, education, the arts, community development, and other issues. The course will also focus on these important questions: (1) Whose responsibility is the public good? How is that responsibility shared by the public, private, and nonprofit sectors? and (2) Given that responsibility for the public good, which individuals and groups make the decisions about how to serve the public good? How are these decisions made, and who benefits from these decisions? Students will consider these questions in an interdisciplinary context that will bring a historical and philosophical perspective to the examination of the values and institutions that characterize the contemporary philanthropy and the nonprofit sector.

Fall

1 Course Unit

URBS 4050 Religion, Social Justice & Urban Development

Urban development has been influenced by religious conceptions of social and economic justice. Progressive traditions within Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Baha'i, Humanism and other religions and systems of moral thought have yielded powerful critiques of oppression and hierarchy as well as alternative economic frameworks for ownership, governance, production, labor, and community. Historical and contemporary case studies from the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East will be considered, as we examine the ways in which religious responses to poverty, inequality, and ecological destruction have generated new forms of resistance and development.

Spring

Also Offered As: AFRC 4050, RELS 4050

1 Course Unit

URBS 4100 Urban Communities and the Arts

Urban Communities and the Arts concerns itself with Arts, Music and Activism in Philadelphia. We investigate the social, economic and cultural fabric from which activism in the arts arises. To do so, we will investigate the histories and artistic reactions to oppression in Philadelphia by drawing on specific examples from various sections of the city and through the media of music, visual art, theater, and dance. The long history of systemic and individual oppression in the US manifests itself in different ways in various urban neighborhoods in Philly and artists of various genres and inclinations participate in activism in many different ways. Examples of artistic and musical responses to the various forms of oppression will be offered and class participants will be asked to bring their own examples to share and analyze. By visiting significant arts practitioners and organizations that provide access to arts education and justice work, participants will have a hands-on experience to unpack the dynamics of artistic production in city life. In addition to art as an outlet for exposing oppression, we will also consider the ways that art and music become markers of the uniqueness of a neighborhood or city, which further complicates the idea of art as a tool for activism. Participants in Urban Communities and the Arts will unpack the role of music and art in defining city or neighborhood cultures by considering a few key sectors that reveal the ways in which cities fail to provide equal access to resources or participate in outright discrimination. At the same time, cities continue to cultivate creative spaces and socio-economic opportunities for economic gain and social understanding through art and music. It is the contradictions that this course will concern itself with and out of our study we will invite course participants to respond creatively. Participants will create either an original work of art, music or intellectual response like a visually interesting research poster as part of a final art/music show. Ultimately students will be asked to reflect back on the role of art in social and political activism to better understand the successes and failures of such movements as they come to define the ethos of city life and its limits.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: URBS 4100

1 Course Unit

URBS 4120 Building Non-Profits: The Business of a Mission-Driven Organization

This course will cover the basic elements of building and growing a non-profit organization, including the development of the mission and the board; needs assessment, program design, development, and management; financial management, contract compliance and understanding an audit; fundraising, public, foundation, corporate, and individual; communication and marketing; organizational administration (including staff and volunteer selection, management and development); public policy, research and advocacy. Students will make site visits and engage role play, in addition to research and writing.

Fall

1 Course Unit

URBS 4150 Urban Real Estate Markets

Cities evolve over time, comprised of various inputs of different sizes at different stages of urban evolution. However, as cities continue to densify and navigate real estate market cycles, opportunities to redefine the urban context, while promoting the individual brand, become ever more sensitive. Projects are increasingly complex, often involving multiple partnerships among private developers, public agencies, non-profits, and community groups. Today's development professionals need to be well-versed across a variety of disciplines and property types to effectively execute in an urban environment. As an introductory course in real estate development, this course will provide the underpinnings for critical decision-making in markets that change frequently and often unevenly - whether for financing, investing, development, public policy formulation, or asset management/disposition.

Spring

1 Course Unit

URBS 4170 Cities and Sustainability

A good idea is not enough - developing innovative and sustainable projects in cities requires understanding "how to get things done." Developing projects to promote sustainability in major US cities requires sensitivity to the political and operational context within which cities implement innovative initiatives. Cities and Sustainability uses Philadelphia as a case study to explore the issues confronting modern American metropolises as they look to manage their resources and promote environmentally friendly policies. URBS 417 will introduce students to leading Philadelphia practitioners of sustainability and municipal projects. Students will be given the tools to politically, economically and critically analyze various sustainable policy initiatives across the United States.

Spring

1 Course Unit

URBS 4190 Urban Transportation in Flux

Transportation systems and networks impact everything from the literal shape ofAmerican cities to their economic vitality and the well-being of their citizens. Urban Infrastructure in Flux provides students with an over view of the political, business, and policy concerns and processes that inform how Americans get around by foot, transit, and car. URBS 419 explores the use and reuse of legacy infrastructure, and roots innovations such as driverless cars, and scooters, in a historical conflict over the right-of-way (ROW). Students will have the opportunity to meet professionals in the field and engage in primary source research and data analysis.

Fall

1 Course Unit

URBS 4200 Perspectives on Urban Poverty

This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to 20th century urban poverty, and 20th century urban poverty knowledge. In addition to providing an historical overview of American poverty, the course is primarily concerned with the ways in which historical, cultural, political, racial, social, spatial/geographical, and economic forces have either shaped or been left out of contemporary debates on urban poverty. Of great importance, the course will evaluate competing analytic trends in the social sciences and their respective implications in terms of the question of what can be known about urban poverty in the contexts of social policy and practice, academic research, and the broader social imaginary. We will critically analyze a wide body of literature that theorizes and explains urban poverty. Course readings span the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, urban studies, history, and social welfare. Primacy will be granted to critical analysis and deconstruction of course texts, particularly with regard to the ways in which poverty knowledge creates, sustains, and constricts meaningful channels of action in urban poverty policy and practice interventions.

Fall

Also Offered As: HIST 0812, SOCI 2944

1 Course Unit

URBS 4300 Quantitative Methods and Tools for Urban Research

This course is an in-depth exploration of quantitative methods and tools fundamental for urban social science research. This course discusses concepts such as significance levels, t-tests, and regression. Additionally, this course provides students, including those with no previous background in R or other programming language, with a basic fluency in R. Concepts will include tabulating data, creating a regression model, and working with spatial data.

Not Offered Every Year

Prerequisite: URBS 2000

1 Course Unit

URBS 4350 The Political Economy of Urban Development

This course provides an introduction to the economic and political theories that have come to shape, for better or for worse, the spatial characteristics of late 20th century urbanism. It is intended to offer a range of analytical approaches to understanding the urban structures and processes that strategies of community-based organizers and urban policy planners seek to influence. The course focuses on postwar U.S. cities (Chicago and other Midwestern/ Northeast rust belt cities in particular), though a number of readings explore these issues in broader contexts. As a way to further understand postwar US urbanism, we will expand our focus briefly to the geopolitical/international scale during the weeks on neoliberalism and microfinance. Urban political economy refers to different theoretical traditions within the social sciences that explain urban development in terms of the relationship between markets, states, and community actors (or, civil society). Part I of the course covers four different theories of modern political economy: Neoclassical, Keynesian, Marxian, and Neoliberal. Our purpose is to provide a framework for political economic analysis and an historical foundation for understanding postwar transformation. Part II of the course grounds the foundational material of Part I by tracing the economic and political forces that have shaped post-war urban development trends in Northeastern and Midwestern cities (especially Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and NY). Particular attention will be given to issues such as race, suburbanization, deindustrialization, welfare state retrenchment, gentrification, and public housing transformation. Part III examines a range of contemporary (post 1970) approaches to urban development, focusing on processes of neoliberalization, neo-clientalism, urban informality, sub prime mortgage lending, and microfinance.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

URBS 4400 Introduction to City Planning: History, Theory and Practice

This course introduces students to the history, theories, and contemporary practice of city and regional planning. Readings, lectures, class discussion, and walking tours focus on: - The evolution of planning ideas, strategies, institutions, and powers, and of planning’s influence on cities and regions around the world; - The structure and dynamics of urban change; - The ways planners and social and environmental scientists have understood, theorized, and responded to social, economic, political, and environmental conditions and change over time; and - The development of the planning profession and its relationships with allied fields, examining various types of planning, urban development, and design.

Fall

1 Course Unit

URBS 4480 Neighborhood Displacement and Community Power

This course uses the history of black displacement to examine community power and advocacy. It examines the methods of advocacy (e.g. case, class, and legislative) and political action through which community activists can influence social policy development and community and institutional change. The course also analyzes selected strategies and tactics of change and seeks to develop alternative roles in the group advocacy, lobbying, public education and public relations, electoral politics, coalition building, and legal and ethical dilemmas in political action. Case studies of neighborhood displacement serve as central means of examining course topics.

Spring

Also Offered As: AFRC 4480

1 Course Unit

URBS 4500 Urban Redevelopment

This course explores the politics and practice of urban development, examining and contrasting efforts led by government, community-based groups, and the private sector. Topics will include: the historical context, dating to the early 20th century, of contemporary practice; how decisions that shape neighborhood change are made and who makes them; technical aspects of community/economic development; and redevelopment and racial equity. The class will be in seminar format, mixing lecture, discussion, and guest speakers. The course requirements include a mid-term writing assignment, an in-class charrette, and a final presentation.

Spring

1 Course Unit

URBS 4510 The Politics of Housing and Urban Development

This course offers an exploration of how legislative action, government policymaking, and citizen advocacy influence plans for the investment of public capital in distressed urban neighborhoods. Course topics this semester will include an evaluation of the results of City of Philadelphia development policies under the eight-year administration of outgoing Mayor James F. Kenney, who will be leaving office in January, 2024. The course will also include an assessment of large-scale property acquisition and development strategies undertaken by the Philadelphia Housing Authority (in North Philadelphia), by Drexel University (in West Philadelphia), and by the Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation (on a citywide basis), as well as a review of recent and current reinvestment proposals for Camden's waterfront and downtown-area neighborhoods.

Fall

Mutually Exclusive: GAFL 5690

1 Course Unit

URBS 4520 Community Economic Development

Community economic development concerns the revitalization of impoverished communities. As with all things economic, poor and working people may be the subjects or the objects of development. We will utilize case studies from Philadelphia and around the world in an exploration of various models of economic justice and sustainable development. Note: Attendance at the the first class is mandatory (for those already enrolled and for those considering enrollment in the course). Enrolled students who miss the first class must drop the course. Those who were not able to enroll but who attend the first class will be permitted to enroll.

Fall

1 Course Unit

URBS 4540 City Limits: The Impact of Urban Policy

This course assesses the changing role of public policy in American cities. In the past, government often believed that it could direct urban development. New realities - the rise of an informal labor market, global capital and labor flows, the flight of businesses and the middle class to the suburbs - have demonstrated that government must see itself as one - but only one - 'player' in a more complete, transactional process of policy making that crosses political boundaries and involves business, organized interest groups, and citizens. This seminar uses a case-study method to study how public policy can make a difference in the revitalization of distressed American cities. The seminar is designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Seminar readings and projects will be organized around three themes: 1) history and vision, 2) data and analysis, and 3) policy and implementation. Students will be divided into project teams assigned to work on current development issues that will be reviewed by both public and private-sector experts. Extensive use will be made of real estate, economic development, and social indicator data to understand the complex forces at work in both large and small cities. Students will learn to access, analyze, and map information; to frame and interpret these data within a regional perspective; and to construct profiles of cities and neighborhoods. Students will study recent urban redevelopment initiatives in the Philadelphia region, including Philadelphia's Neighborhood Transformations Initiative and New Jersey's Camden Revitalization plans.

Spring

1 Course Unit

URBS 4570 Globalization & The City: Global Urbanization

In 2008, the UN estimated that the worlds population had become primarily urban, for the first time in history. According to the OECD, by the end of the century, close to 85% of the projected population will live in cities. The transition towards an urban planet is likely to have far-reaching economic, environmental, social, political, and cultural impacts on our species, many of which we cannot yet predict. But what is urbanization? Will it lead to more inequality, exploitation, conflict, resource consumption, and exposure to natural disasters and climate change, or is it an opportunity to move the world in a more sustainable and equitable direction? Taught by Chandan Deuskar and Patricio Zambrano Barragan, this course aims to explore these questions. In the first half of the semester, we will discuss various challenges associated with global urbanization and its impacts. In the second half, we will focus on responses to these challenges. The assignments will allow students to explore some of the most salient debates around global urbanization By the end of the semester, students will be better able to understand the context for any future academic research, professional work, or business activities in the cities of the 'developing world'. The course will help provide a foundation for any students considering graduate studies or professional work in the fields of urban planning or international development.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: SOCI 2945

1 Course Unit

URBS 4730 The History & Theory of Community Organizing

"Power concedes nothing without a demand."--Frederick Douglass. "Workers of theworld, unite!"--Karl Marx. "Don't mourn. Organize."--Joe Hill. "Strong people do not need strong leaders."--Ella Baker. "Freedom is a constant struggle."--Angela Davis. We will review the history and theory of critique, resistance, and solidarity, as we consider old and new social movements and freedom struggles around the world (Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia)--from encampments for indigenous sovereignty of tribal lands to demonstrations by poor and working people seeking "the right to the city;" from sit-ins and strikes to occupations and takeovers, from uprisings and insurrections to revolutions and counterrevolutions, from anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, anti-caste, and anti-racist insurgencies to mobilizations for racial and gender justice and solidarity economy; from civil rights, labor rights, student rights, human rights, animal rights, and environmental organizing to movements for peace, democracy, equality, and liberation--and more (based on student interests and commitments). Strategies and techniques will be reviewed. Successes and failures will be registered. Limitations and possibilities will be debated. Source material will be drawn from mainstream and radical traditions within popular praxis and numerous fields, including urban studies, philosophy and critical theory, religion, history, artand culture, anthropology, politics, development economics, social psychology, sociology, organizational development, and law. Note: Attendance at the first class is mandatory (for those already enrolled and for those considering enrollment in the course). Enrolled students who miss the first class must drop the course. Those who were not able to enroll but who attend the first class will be permitted to enroll.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: SOCI 2946

1 Course Unit

URBS 4760 Urban Housing & Community Development Policy in America

The government intervenes in housing markets in different ways and for different reasons, and relies on a range of partners to do so. This course explores why the federal and local governments in the U.S., along with non-profit and community-based partners, intervene in housing markets and what forms these interventions take. Specifically, students will learn about: the mechanisms that drive the supply and demand for housing; factors that affect the production, distribution, and location of housing; the social impact of housing on households and neighborhoods; civil rights and fair housing; the equity implications of housing policies and programs.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

URBS 4780 Undergraduate Urban Research Colloquium

A seminar run in conjunction with the Institute for Urban Research at Penn, students will learn about the range of cutting-edge topics in urbanism that Penn faculty are working on and work closely with a faculty member on current research. Students will learn about new topics and methods in interdisciplinary urban research, and get first hand experience collecting urban data under the close supervision of an experienced researcher. Students and faculty jointly will present their findings for discussion. This course is a good introduction for how to frame and conduct an urban research project.

Spring

Mutually Exclusive: CPLN 5780

1 Course Unit

URBS 4800 Liberation and Ownership

Who is going to own what we all have a part of creating? The history of the Americas, and of all peoples everywhere, is an evolving answer to the question of ownership. Ownership is about: the ties that bind and those that separate; production, participation, and control; the creation of community and the imposition of hierarchies--racial, sexual, and others; dreams of possessing and the burdens of debt and ecological despoliation; dependency and the slave yearning to breathe free. Of all the issues relevant to democracy, oppression, injustice, and inequality, ownership is arguably the most important and least understood. Utilizing a variety of disciplinary perspectives--with a particular emphasis on radical and critical theories of liberation, and by focusing on particular global sites and processes of capitalism, students will assess and refine their views regarding ownership and liberation in light of their own social, political, religious, aesthetic, and ethical commitments.

Fall

Also Offered As: AFRC 4800

1 Course Unit

URBS 4910 The Inclusive City: Participatory Design at Taller Puertorriqueno

The Inclusive City: Participatory Design at Taller Puertorriqueno seminar will provide students in and beyond the Architecture department with the opportunity to learn from and with Taller Puertorriqueno about community, spacemaking, and memorialization in the built environment. Students will learn about a neighborhood and engage in collaborative participatory design, engaging primary sources in the Taller archives, and working on a collaborative design project. Starting from a general (region-urban) to particular (neighborhood) methodology research on site across several categories, and engaging primary sources in the Taller archives, the students will generate relational territorial cartographies and mappings, allowing them to develop a master architectural plan that includes urban strategies, as well as dynamic processes of community development. As a truly interdisciplinary course, students will utilize design concepts, historical methods, and ethnoracial lenses of analysis to collaborate with Taller Puertorriqueno to develop targeted architectural solutions that align with the organization's programmatic goals.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: AFRC 4920, HIST 0874, LALS 4910

1 Course Unit

URBS 4999 Independent Study

Specialized topics in Urban Studies. This course may be taken by permit only, once a faculty advisor has agreed to be the professor of record, and the scope of work has been approved in advance by the department.

Fall or Spring

1-2 Course Units

URBS 5050 Women and Urban Struggles in Latin America

In Latin America, 80% of the population lives in a city. As many of these cities enter the worldwide competition for attracting networks and capitals—and to join the select club of the so-called global cities—many city residents become progressively dispossessed and excluded to the peripheries, where urban services are rarely adequate. Power relations of class, race, and gender play an essential role in how dispossession is orchestrated in the city and experienced by its residents. This course focuses on how women, specifically, find ways to “endure” in the cities of Latin America, exploring different cases of urban struggles led by women. Across the region, many have been pointing out the extraordinary leadership of women in a wide variety of political struggles - from occupying public places, to denouncing the disappearance of loved ones, and to community organizing that helps build necessary infrastructure in their neighborhoods. Women are also at the forefront of environmental and ecological transformations, leading initiatives to green their city through urban agriculture, reforestation, recycling, and compost projects. Addressed through a holistic approach to caring, these initiatives are embedded in broader struggles for housing, security, and wellness, specifically in the urban peripheries. The contingency of these projects is, at their core, multifaceted: they are typically part of women’s implication in popular education, artivism, and human rights defense. During this course, we will explore and analyze how the specific urban contexts of Latin America affect women and their political subjectivities and how, through their struggles, they play an essential role in re-shaping their cities.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: GSWS 5050, LALS 5050

1 Course Unit

URBS 5060 Public Environment of Cities: An Introduction to the Urban Landscape

This course will explore the role of public spaces - streets, boulevards, parks and squares - in cities and their social uses. With the University of Pennsylvania campus and the City of Philadelphia serving as our laboratory, we will critically examine the evolution of the movement of corridors, open space and buildings of the urban landscape and their changing uses. Following the flaneur tradition of Baudelaire and Benjamin, we will walk the city to experience and understand the myriad environments and neighborhoods that comprise it.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

URBS 5300 GIS Applications in Social Science

This course will introduce students to the principles behind Geographic Information Science and applications of (GIS) in the social sciences. Examples of GIS applications in social services, public health, criminology, real estate, environmental justice, education, history, and urban studies will be used to illustrate how GIS integrates, displays, and facilitates analysis of spatial data through maps and descriptive statistics. Students will learn to create data sets through primary and secondary data collection, map their own data, and create maps to answer research questions. The course will consist of a combination of lecture and lab.

Fall

1 Course Unit

URBS 5320 Mapping Philadelphia

Philadelphia is a city that was mapped before it was built, inhabited before it was developed. Founder William Penn's original concept for the gridded city continues to inform the historical evolution of Philadelphia, even as city planners, architects, artists, and social justice activists work to transform the layers of our built environment. This class will study the city through a variety of archival maps, historical mapping practices, and emergent digital approaches to representing space and time. We will explore public history projects that seek approaches to place-making and place-keeping at neighborhood intersections, share dialogue with social practice artists who produce site- specific works, and visualize civic data through platforms such as OpenDataPhilly. Each student will pursue a final research project resulting in a close study of a particular street or intersection in the city. This is an MLA course open primarily to MLA students, Urban Studies undergraduate seniors, and Urban Studies graduate certificate program students. If you would like to register for the course, please contact Urban Studies Coordinator Vicky Karkov.

Spring

1 Course Unit

URBS 5420 Archiving Jazz: Visuality And Materiality In The Phila Jazz Community 1945-2019

This seminar will be organized around three distinct pathways. First, it will serve as an introduction to Jazz Studies and thus be attentive to the ways that jazz music has sparked an interdisciplinary conversation that is wide-ranging and ongoing. Second, we will be partnering with the African American Museum of Philadelphia to consider jazz within the realm of visual art. In light of efforts to map the "black interior," how have visual artists (e.g. painters, sculptors, filmmakers, and photographers) sought to represent jazz? Third, we will endeavor to develop partnerships with the Philadelphia (and beyond) jazz community, especially as it pertains to creating and sustaining an archive that serves as way to understand jazz as an instrument of placemaking and also as a vehicle for jazz musicians to take ownership of their narratives. The seminar will meet at the African American Museum of Philadelphia and be team taught with members of the Museum staff. The course will culminate with a virtual exhibit of visual works and archival materials centering on Philadelphia's jazz community and (if funding is available) a free concert to be held at AAMP. Undergraduates are welcome to register for the course with permission of the instructor.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: AFRC 5420, ARTH 5190

1 Course Unit

URBS 5440 Public Environmental Humanities

By necessity, work in environmental humanities spans academic disciplines. By design, it can also address and engage publics beyond traditional academic settings. This seminar explores best practices in public environmental humanities. Students receive close mentoring and build collaborative community to develop and execute cross-disciplinary, public engagement projects on the environment. This spring, this broadly interdisciplinary course is designed in conjunction with the ongoing environmental humanities project, An Ecotopian Toolkit for the Anthropocene. In the framework of our seminar, students will have opportunities to work with tne project’s curators and educators as well as Toolmakers on project-based assignments that also engage wider publics around issues of climate and environmental justice. This lab-style seminar is suitable for advanced undergraduates (with permission) and fulfills the “Capstone” requirement for the Minor in Environmental Humanities. It is also open to graduate students in departments across Arts and Sciences as well as other schools at the university.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ANTH 5440, COML 5440, ENVS 5440, GRMN 5440

1 Course Unit

URBS 5460 Global Citizenship

This course examines the possibilities and limitations of conceiving of and realizing citizenship on a global scale. Readings, guest lecturers, and discussions will focus on dilemmas associated with addressing issues that transcend national boundaries. In particular, the course compares global/local dynamics that emerge across different types of improvement efforts focusing on distinctive institutions and social domains, including: educational development; human rights; humanitarian aid; free trade; micro-finance initiatives; and the global environmental movement. The course has two objectives: to explore research and theoretical work related to global citizenship, social engagement, and international development; and to discuss ethical and practical issues that emerge in the local contexts where development initiatives are implemented.

Spring

Also Offered As: ANTH 5460, EDUC 5431

1 Course Unit

URBS 5470 Anthropology and Education

An introduction to the intent, approach, and contribution of anthropology to the study of socialization and schooling in cross-cultural perspective. Education is examined in traditional, colonial, and complex industrial societies.

Fall, Spring, and Summer Terms

Also Offered As: ANTH 5470, EDUC 5495

1 Course Unit

URBS 5610 History of the Line

This seminar offers a way of expanding our notion of “graphic art,” from concentrated studies of drawings and print to encounters with dance, design, video art, and urban planning. Open to graduate and undergraduate students.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ARTH 5612

1 Course Unit

URBS 5670 Urban Sociology

This course will examine the urban structures and processes which characterize the social and cultural milieu of the contemporary American city. Specific course topics will include the social organization of local urban subcultures and neighborhood communities, the cultural consequences of gentrification and racial segregation, the reputation of cities in the public imagination, and the commodification of the urban landscape.

Also Offered As: SOCI 5670

1 Course Unit

URBS 5999 Independent Study

Specialized topics in Urban Studies. This course may be taken by permit only, once a faculty advisor has agreed to be the professor of record, and the scope of work has been approved in advance by the department.

Fall or Spring

1 Course Unit

URBS 6080 Urban Studies Proseminar

Open to PhD students, this scholar-oriented seminar explores how academic researchers from different disciplines define researchable questions, craft research designs, and contribute to knowledge through an examination of important and/or recently published books and monographs with an urban focus. Required of all doctoral students enrolled in the Urban Studies Graduate Certificate Program. Enrollment is limited to 15 students. Other doctoral students may enroll on a space available basis. Course requirements include completion of a major research paper on a topic selected in consultation with the instructor.

Spring

1 Course Unit

URBS 6604 Neoliberalism and the City

Over fifty percent of the worlds population now lives in cities. Neoliberlism-the ideology and accompanying policies and practices that champion the shifting of political decision making from the public sector to the private sector - has been widely recognized as having shown dramatic growth worldwide since the 1970s. It has also been widely regarded as a product of globalization. This course traces the history of neo-liberalism in global context with particular attention to neoliberalism's relationship to cities, and exam the role that urban growth has played in spurring neoliberal policies and practices. It asks how policy makers, voters, and private interest worldwide have responded to the growth of urban poverty and slums, challenges withing urban public education, unequal resource distribution, environmental pressures experienced within urban sanitation and waste disposal systems, and increased demands for municipal services like water, electricity, and transport infrastructers, and examined the rise of public-private partnerships, gated communities, initiatives to privatized education and municipal services, and efforts to relocate slum-dwellers and beautify cities as explicit strategies for attracting "global capital". The course also asks how the recent rise of neoliberal policies and practices differs from earlier market-driven and private sector led forms of political governance. The British and Dutch East India Companies are two famous examples of joint stock companies that assumed administrative and political roles over their colonies. How did the rise of these colonial relationships differ from current neoliberal shifts. Readings will draw heavily from ethnographic and urban studies, scholarship on South Asia, as well as Latin America, South Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and North America, exploring what each of these specific contexts has to teach us more generally about the relationship between urbanization, global capitalism, public and private sectors, and political processes and decision making.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: SAST 6604

1 Course Unit

URBS 6999 Independent Study

Specialized topics in Urban Studies. This course may be taken by permit only, once a faculty advisor has agreed to be the professor of record, and the scope of work has been approved in advance by the department.

Fall or Spring

1 Course Unit

URBS 7060 Culture/Power/Subjectivities

This doctoral level course will introduce students to a conceptual language and theoretical tools for analyzing and explaining the complex intersection of racialized, ethnic, gendered, sexual, and classed differences and asymmetrical social relations. The students will examine critically the interrelationships between culture, power, and subjectivity through a close reading of classical and contemporary social theory. Emphasis will be given to assessing the power of various theories for conceptualizing and explaining mechanisms of social stratification as well as the basis of social order and processes of social change.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ANTH 7040, EDUC 8405

Prerequisite: EDUC 5495

1 Course Unit

URBS 7999 Independent Study

Specialized topics in Urban Studies. This course may be taken by permit only, once a faculty advisor has agreed to be the professor of record, and the scope of work has been approved in advance by the department. Specialized topics in Urban Studies. This course may be taken by permit only, once a faculty advisor has agreed to be the professor of record, and the scope of work has been approved in advance by the department.

Fall or Spring

1 Course Unit

URBS 8999 Independent Study

Specialized topics in Urban Studies. This course may be taken by permit only, once a faculty advisor has agreed to be the professor of record, and the scope of work has been approved in advance by the department.

Fall or Spring

1 Course Unit

URBS 9005 Finding Voice: Perspectives on Race, Class and Gender

This writing workshop explores the influence of identity, primarily race, class, gender, and sexuality, on the ways we convey our personal truths to the world.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: AFRC 9005, ENGL 9005, GSWS 9005, MLA 5005

1 Course Unit

URBS 9006 Learning from James Baldwin

This class will examine the intellectual legacy that James Baldwin left to present-day writers such as Toni Morrison, Charles Johnson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Thulani Davis, Caryl Phillips, and others. We will spend time reading and discussing Baldwin's novels, short stories, plays and essays, and students will research subjects of their own choosing about Baldwin's life and art.

Also Offered As: AFRC 9006, ENGL 9006, GSWS 9006, MLA 5006

1 Course Unit

URBS 9013 Memoir Writing

This memoir workshop will shine light on the human experience as viewed through your personal lens. We’ll see how memoir can illuminate larger cultural themes - from the inhumanity of war, to racism, misogyny, and economic inequality - as viewed through lived experiences.

Also Offered As: ENGL 9013, GSWS 9013, MLA 5013

1 Course Unit

URBS 9016 Being Human: A Personal Approach to Race, Class & Gender

In this workshop, we will address the ways race, class, and gender impact our lives, our work, and our culture. As a class, we will create connection and community by practicing deep listening, daily writing, deep reading, and the sharing of ideas and observations.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: AFRC 9016, ENGL 9016, GSWS 9016, MLA 5016

1 Course Unit

URBS 9017 Considering Race, Class and Punishment in the American Prison System

This writing seminar will sharpen and expand our writing, while bringing to our hearts and minds a deeper understanding of the reality of imprisonment in the United States. This system never goes away. This year it is locking up more than 2,300,000 men, women and children—the highest per-capita rate of imprisonment in the world. Even when we know the statistics and watch shows about crime and jail on TV, what do we really know about life behind bars? For a year? Ten years? Life? As a young journalist, I saw how the criminal justice system was used to suppress Black leadership. I felt drawn to teach creative writing at Holmesburg Prison, to eventually investigate the state prison system, interview prisoners, make friendships, write a newspaper series, magazine articles, and my first book on the subject. For nearly five decades, I’ve observed the human cost of a prison system that connects and damages all of our lives and keeps people from poverty in place. In this course, we will seek insights in books and stories written from prisoners’ personal experiences. We’ll also read scholars—Michelle Alexander, Bryan Stevenson, Angela Davis and others—who shed light on the historical repetitions and political exploitations. Guest speakers will include public defenders, parolees, former prisoners, and those fighting for prisoners’ rights and re-entry. Students will gain a more intimate understanding of how the legacies of slavery, racism, the prejudices of class, caste, and misogyny intersect and determine who goes to prison and who does not. Students will free-write for ten minutes a day, every day, and write personal reflections on readings, films, and guest speakers. Responses will lead to essays or stories that students write and present for class discussion. These key pieces may draw from observation, facts and imagination, and may traverse literary nonfiction, memoir, fiction, or poetry. We will present the best of your work in a reading at the end of the semester.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: AFRC 9017, ENGL 9017, GSWS 9017, MLA 5017

1 Course Unit