Handbook

This course explores the roles cities can and do play in driving, exacerbating, and potentially addressing a range of environmental and social challenges. With the majority of the world’s human population now living in cities, and with human urban accretion accelerating at a time of multifaceted anthropogenic ecological crises, it is essential environmental leaders have a transdisciplinary understanding of urban processes and impacts on our shared environments. Accordingly, in this course you will address both the promise and risks of urbanism through a variety of lenses and dynamics, such as socioeconomic class, environmental justice, consumerism, degrowth, and new approaches to urban nature and urban futures. This course will involve required fieldwork to enable you to apply, evaluate, and adapt course concepts in a number of real-world urban sites, while developing ideas, experiences, and practices in urban environmental and social change-making.