Geography

This course examines the physical, human, and socioeconomic differences between Anglo-Saxon and Ibero-American areas of the Americas. It discusses development, effects of globalization, and on-going conflicts.

There are important differences in terms of economic dynamics between cities and regions. The question of why some areas tend to be wealthier than others, and how these differences in wealth change over time, is crucial. This course analyzes the economic success and failure of cities and regions according to the main economic theories of regional growth. Building on theories and concepts from previous courses, students start with agglomeration theories. Then traditional growth theories of convergence and divergence, the basic concepts of evolutionary theory and its application to the spatial dynamics of industries, economic growth, and the spatial dynamics of innovation networks are considered. Special attention is devoted to the spatial-economic and industrial and innovation policy in the Netherlands and the European Union. Students organize a seminar with people from the academic, policy, and business world.

This course critically examines notions of globalization, and in particular economic globalization. This course will allow students to develop an understanding of the global scale of human activity with a particular emphasis on the economic dimension, as well develop an understanding of how the world is shaped by the interaction between economic, political, social, and cultural processes operating at different, but connected, geographical scales, from the global through the national to the local.

This reading, field-trip, and discussion course exposes a range of contemporary geographic narratives, and then works to apply the narratives while exploring daily life in Jerusalem with and for diverse populations. The course examines a series of readings introducing frameworks including the ordinary city; the global, world and capital city; the Zionist city; and the city as shaped by history and religion. The course also weaves a set of four field trips in Jerusalem, three guided and one self-guided. It provides a platform for informed, critical, and multi-perspective discussion about contemporary spatial practices in Jerusalem. The course also encourages challenging values and perspectives while exploring the impact of ideology on the built environment and on the range of Jerusalemites.

This course examines the importance of GIS to building smart cities and the ways in which the technology can be integrated with other ICT in order to support different aspects in urban development. It covers an introduction to smart city and its components; geospatial open data and common spatial data infrastructure; enabling technologies for smart city; delivering smart cities through a geospatial strategy; GIS basics; working with ArcGIS online; using web GIS and geospatial cloud in smart city applications delivery; using 3D GIS in smart city planning and development; using mobile GIS in smart city data collection and public engagement; handling real-time geospatial data for smart city parameters monitoring; applying spatial analytics to solve spatial problems and predictive analysis in smart city planning.

Since the mid-18th century, medicine has become a major economic and political concern for those who have governed London, and a profession with extraordinarily far-reaching authority in the management and even definition of human life. The very landscape of London has been framed as a source of sickness, temptation, and pollution.  This course explores the health landscapes of London in both Victorian and contemporary times. This course compares the landscapes of disease and (im)morality of Victorian London with contemporary London, accompanied by an examination of how the intervening world wars and establishment of the welfare state shaped the social and physical landscape of the city in relation to health. This course also includes out of the classroom activites allowing students to explore the history of health, disease, and medicine in four very different London landscapes.