Urban Studies

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.

This course examines practices of urbanism across a range of contexts from antiquity to the present day. By doing so it allows students to develop insights into the social relations and human struggles that have been produced by, and continue to produce, particular types of built forms in different places over time. In the broadest sense, the course uses urbanism as a lens to understand the relationship between urban forms and the complex, multiple processes that constitute cities and their urban milieus.

This course examines the intricate relationship between colonialism, urban development, and economic growth through the lens of political ecology. A central theme of the course is the examination of colonial legacies and their enduring impact on contemporary urban and environmental dynamics. We will critically analyze how Europe's historical growth has often occurred at the expense of other regions, relying on extractive and exploitation of resources in colonized territories to fuel metropolitan centers. Through the classical readings in this field, contemporary case studies, and critical discussions, we will interrogate the role of colonialism in shaping global patterns of urbanization, resource extraction, and environmental degradation. By the end of the course, we will gain insights into potential pathways for building more equitable and environmentally sustainable futures.

The course provides the key economic concepts and tools for analyzing environmental and urban issues; introduces and explains the application of economic methods to the analysis of the built and natural environments; presents the ways in which sound economic analysis is critical to urban and environmental policy making; and encourages critical debate and reflection on the key environmental and urban policy issues. 

This course introduces students to selected ways in which human geographers seek to understand cities. It explores the relationship between people and place. Primarily engaging with London, students consider how the city has been shaped over time by its people and how, in turn the city experience has shaped and continues to shape the lives of those who live there. Students consider how the city is described, imagined, and planned through official discourses, and how people create a sense of place, of self, and of others in the city. In the fall semester, students explore the relationship between planning, architecture, design, and people’s identities. In the spring semester, students explore the relationship between infrastructure and people. Throughout students consider how human geographers engage with the lived experience of the city through the lens of, for example, ethnicity, class, and sexual identity.

The course focuses on various land use and system dynamic topics to guide class discussions in the weekly seminar meetings. Lectures are watched outside of scheduled meeting times to maximize time for discussion and expansion of ideas in class. The topic focuses include the following: global urbanization dynamics, global land use and change, urbanization, global land take of urbanization, urban expansion, urbanization in regards to climate change, urban climate change economics (including subtopics of buildings emissions and urban heat), as well as urban transport. 

The city and language course introduces students to French history, culture, and language through team-taught instruction. In the “City as Public Forum” sessions, students are introduced to French history and culture through a series of lectures and site visits. Students discover some of the fascinating ways the core principles of social justice were tested in theory and practice on the streets of Paris in the past and explore how they evolved into the pillars of French society today. The course focuses on just how an ideal society should be forged, where all are free individuals and members of a cohesive community at the same time. Trying to make individuals believe—as religions do—in the primacy of the collective, and in its concomitant goal of protecting human rights, is at the core of social justice in France. From 52 B.C.E to today, France has been an exemplar of how—and how not—to construct a just society. To render these values visible, and therefore legible, to all by adding a physical dimension—whether constructive or destructive—to the usual means of establishing laws or setting policies, is what distinguishes the history of France's capital city of Paris. Those who control Paris—be they monarchs, revolutionaries, or presidents, past and present—believe that erecting all kinds of physical structures will render their values concrete and immutable. The ideal French society did not always necessarily mean a democratic or inclusive one. Since the French Revolution, however, institutionalizing the concept of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” has been France's greatest universal achievement and a source of constant upheaval, eliciting a unique form of secular activism that has led to targeting buildings and monuments that no longer reflect the collective's values. Students discuss how the diverse social actors, who constitute “the French,” continue to thrust their bodies and minds into the physical spaces of the public sphere in the pursuit of social justice. In the “Unlocking French” sessions, students learn targeted language skills through situational communication, so they have the opportunity to use everything they learn as they go about their daily activities.

This course covers the strategic aspects of facilities management: strategy formulation, planning, studying options, delivery and review. Emphasis is on the strategy and business of the organization and how this translates into the outcomes for the physical workplace. Topics include strategic facilities management framework; the need for coordination between workflow and space; facilities management system and tools; the procedures; automation; integrated FM systems; and strategic FM case studies.