Urban Studies

This service-learning course combines a structured curriculum and extensive partnership with a local community-based organization to offer tangible community service. Here, student community service includes direct
engagement as well as a research-based action plan addressing a specific challenge or goal identified by a community-based organization. Students begin by exploring key community-based organizations: examining their
mission, vision and goals, and the place of the organization in the local community. Each student then works with an assigned partner organization and invests at least 90 hours partnering with the organization, working with them
and investigating ways to solve a challenge or issue the organization has identified. Student service-learning includes exploring the proximate and ultimate drivers of the organization's chosen challenge, and the organization's
infrastructure, resources, limitations and possibilities for reducing barriers to achieving the organization's self-identified goals. In concert, coursework probes the role of community-based organizations in both local and global
contexts, common challenges of community-based organizations in defining and implementing their goals, the role of service-learning in addressing these issues, and effective ways for students to help them achieve their mission,
vision, and goals. Coursework also guides the student's service-learning experience by helping students develop sound international service ethics, provide tools to investigate solutions to common development issues, aid in
data analysis and presentation, and provide best practices to illustrate findings and deliver approved joint recommendations orally and in writing. Throughout, students use service-learning as a means to expand their global awareness and understanding, explore shared aspirations for social justice, and develop skills to work with others to effect positive change.

The course focuses on Berlin as a case study of urban governance for sustainability. It compares local policy challenges in national and international contexts, developing a more nuanced view on the top down and bottom up strategies of building sustainable cities. The course combines a comparative policy analysis approach with concepts of international relations studies. The objective is to unravel the concept of sustainability and study its translation into politics and policies in multi-level governance structures.

This course examines the principles and practices of sustainable urban development and the legacy of design at multiple spatial and temporal scales. This course will provide an understanding of the interacting physical processes between urbanization and the local environment as well as issues in global sustainability such as certification of materials and utility of urban land use types. 

This course studies contemporary economic changes of city-regions by focusing on urban and regional development. Focus is on the rise of the post-industrial knowledge economy and the new economic and social geographies, the new divisions of labor and social classes, and how these are linked to urban restructuring.

CIEE supports qualified students who wish to pursue an academically rigorous independent research project while abroad. In order to enroll, students must submit a research proposal including a clearly defined research topic,
explanation of research plans, description of preparation in the planned area of study, list of resources, tentative outline of a final paper, and suggested schedule of progress. Students complete a total of 100-120 hours of
research and meet regularly with an advisor to complete an academically rigorous, ethically sound, and culturally appropriate research project and final research paper. Approval for participation in Directed Independent Research
must be obtained from CIEE and the student's home institution prior to arrival on the program.

This is an independent research course with research arranged between the student and faculty member. The specific research topics vary each term and are described on a special project form for each student. A substantial paper is required. The number of units varies with the student’s project, contact hours, and method of assessment, as defined on the student’s special study project form.

This course examines urbanism transnationally with a focus on the Global South cities to expose students to the accelerating rate of urbanization in fundamentally different urban settings. It unpacks complexities of urbanism specific to the Global South including but not limited to enormous rate of urban transformation, massive infrastructure gaps, ubiquitous informality, confronting inequalities, and exponatial rate of climate change. In doing so, the course sheds light on the historic, socio-economic, and geo-political setting behind the complexity of urban challenges and opportunities in unfamiliar geographies. This will provide students with provocative and productive urban frameworks for all cities, informed by an ability to transfer learnings from the Global South to the local context and unpack some of the growing concerns about widening inequities, infrastructure lags and others.

This course examines the long-term perspectives of environmental and climate change policies in France and Japan, considering historical developments, current challenges, and future prospects. It engages with a range of sources in French, English, and Japanese to develop a comprehensive understanding of the policies, strategies, and frameworks implemented in the context of environmental and climate change.  The course provides an opportunity to develop one's ability to analyze and compare the approaches and effectiveness of environmental and climate change policies between France and Japan.

This course will be essentially taught in English and, depending on the students' proficiency level in French, will use some or many documents in French. 

This course covers how a project manager leads the project team. Major topics include theories of leadership; traits of project leaders; and leadership competencies such as visioning, strategizing, team building, decision-making, empowering, influencing, planning, and communicating.

What is at stake in reading, writing, depicting and telling the histories of Berlin’s architectural and urban landscape? How do historical and analytical frameworks shape scholarly understandings of the city? How does the architecture of Berlin shape its history and theory? Conducted as a discussion seminar, this course uses recent architectural and urban histories of 20th century Berlin to explore different ways of narrating the city’s history. Each week, students will approach Berlin’s urbanity through different textual and visual media to discuss the themes and methods—from femininity to migration, politics to privatization—by which they narrate the entanglement of Berlin’s physical and social landscape. Over the course of the semester, students will develop their scholarly reading techniques, and their fluency in the multipolar and manifold circumstances of the city. The premise of the course is that engaging the narrative can lead to ‘changing the narrative,’ thereby opening the door for students to develop an original final project, situating their worldly experience in the past, present and future of Berlin.