GEOG 111-01 10293 |
Human Geography of Global Issues |
Days: M W F
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Time: 01:10 pm-02:10 pm
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Room: CARN 06A
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Instructor: Jesse McClelland
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Avail./Max.: 8 / 30
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*First day attendance required*
Details
Human geographers have been at the forefront of studying a range of global issues, paying particular attention to the spatial organization of human activity and of people's relationships with their environment. Their work frequently highlights the interdependence between regions, as well as the uniqueness of specific places. This course examines the basic concepts and processes that shape human geography. Global and local patterns of population, migration, environmental resources, agriculture, economy and urbanization are surveyed and the factors influencing these patterns are discussed. Distinctions between the more developed (core) and the less developed (peripheral) regions of the world are highlighted and regional examples are used to illustrate geographic concepts. This course is an alternative to GEOG 113 - World Regional Geography: People, Places and Globalization. Students should take one course or the other as an introduction to the field or the major. (Students can also earn credit equivalent to GEOG 111 or GEOG 113 by scoring a 4 or 5 on the Advanced Placement Exam in Human Geography.)
General Education Requirements:
Internationalism
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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GEOG 225-01 10295 |
Introduction to Geographic Information Systems |
Days: M W F
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Time: 09:40 am-10:40 am
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Room: CARN 107
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Instructor: Holly Barcus
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Avail./Max.: 0 / 30
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*Permission of instructor required; first day attendance required*
Details
This course provides an introduction to cartography, visualization, and analyses of geospatial data, as well as hands-on experience with geospatial technologies in the GIS laboratory. Students will learn the basics of mapping/cartography (e.g. scale, projections, map design) and Geographic Information Systems. Students will create maps with commonly used digital data (e.g., aerial photographs, census boundaries, digital elevation models, etc.), and master basic methods of spatial analyses. Both concepts and techniques will be taught in this course. Hands-on assignments include classification of demographic data and query/analysis of vector and raster data. One and one half laboratory hours per week required. Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor.
General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q2
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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GEOG 225-L1 10818 |
Introduction to Geographic Information Systems |
Days: W
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Time: 10:50 am-12:20 pm
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Room: CARN 108
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Instructor: Ashley Nepp
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Avail./Max.: 10 / 23
|
*Permission of instructor required; first day attendance required*
Details
This course provides an introduction to cartography, visualization, and analyses of geospatial data, as well as hands-on experience with geospatial technologies in the GIS laboratory. Students will learn the basics of mapping/cartography (e.g. scale, projections, map design) and Geographic Information Systems. Students will create maps with commonly used digital data (e.g., aerial photographs, census boundaries, digital elevation models, etc.), and master basic methods of spatial analyses. Both concepts and techniques will be taught in this course. Hands-on assignments include classification of demographic data and query/analysis of vector and raster data. One and one half laboratory hours per week required. Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor.
General Education Requirements:
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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GEOG 225-L2 10819 |
Introduction to Geographic Information Systems |
Days: R
|
Time: 09:40 am-11:10 am
|
Room: CARN 108
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Instructor: Ashley Nepp
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Avail./Max.: 6 / 23
|
*Permission of instructor required; first day attendance required*
Details
This course provides an introduction to cartography, visualization, and analyses of geospatial data, as well as hands-on experience with geospatial technologies in the GIS laboratory. Students will learn the basics of mapping/cartography (e.g. scale, projections, map design) and Geographic Information Systems. Students will create maps with commonly used digital data (e.g., aerial photographs, census boundaries, digital elevation models, etc.), and master basic methods of spatial analyses. Both concepts and techniques will be taught in this course. Hands-on assignments include classification of demographic data and query/analysis of vector and raster data. One and one half laboratory hours per week required. Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor.
General Education Requirements:
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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GEOG 232-01 10296 |
People, Agriculture and the Environment |
Days: T R
|
Time: 03:00 pm-04:30 pm
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Room: CARN 06A
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Instructor: William Moseley
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Avail./Max.: Closed 9 / 30
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*First day attendance required; cross-listed with ENVI 232-01*
Details
This course introduces you to the study of human-environment interactions from a geographic perspective, with a special emphasis on food and agriculture. We examine environmental issues in a variety of geographic contexts (Global South and Global North) and the connections between environmental problems in different locations. Beyond agriculture, we also explore other sectoral issues in relation to farming and food security. These themes include: human population growth, consumption, biodiversity, climate change, and environmental health. We try on a number of theoretical lenses from geography's broad human-environment tradition (such as physical geography, cultural ecology, commodity chain analysis, political ecology, resource geography, the human dimensions of global change, hazards geography and environmental justice). In other words, we not only explore a range of agricultural and environmental issues, but also grapple with theory and how this informs our understanding of the human-environment interface.
General Education Requirements:
Internationalism
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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GEOG 243-F1 10298 |
Geography of Africa: Local Resources and Livelihoods in a Global Context |
Days: T R
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Time: 09:40 am-11:10 am
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Room: CARN 105
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Instructor: William Moseley
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Avail./Max.: 0 / 17
|
*First-Year Course only; first day attendance required*
Details
From the positive images in the film Black Panther, to the derogatory remarks of President Trump, the African continent often figures prominently in our collective imagination. This class goes beyond the superficial media interpretations of the world's second largest region to complicate and ground our understanding of this fascinating continent. As geographers, we will place contemporary African developments in a historical and global context. Africa has a long history of influencing and being influenced by the outside world. Among other issues, we will explore how colonialism, and even more recent 'development' initiatives, have influenced current structures in Africa. Furthermore, we will examine what restrictions, if any, the current world economic system places on development possibilities for the continent. The course provides a basic background in African history and bio-physical environments, leading to discussion of advanced topics in contemporary African studies. We will cover a broad range of sectoral themes, including: health and population dynamics; food and agriculture; cities and urbanization; rural life; parks and peoples; development and underdevelopment; politics and governance; and sociocultural geography and music.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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GEOG 254-F1 10299 |
Population 8 Billion: Global Population Issues and Trends |
Days: M W F
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Time: 12:00 pm-01:00 pm
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Room: CARN 105
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Instructor: Holly Barcus
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Avail./Max.: 0 / 16
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*First-Year Course only; first day attendance required; cross-listed with ENVI 254-F1*
Details
This course challenges students to critically examine contemporary global population issues and link these patterns and processes to local events and situations. Using the lens of Geography, we will investigate the dynamic interplay between individual, local, regional, national, and international scales and the implications of scale, culture and perspective in dissecting current population issues. We will also use individual countries as case studies to examine population policies. Students will acquire a working knowledge of the data and methods used by population geographers to describe and analyze changes in human populations at sub-national scales, and will implement these skills in an independent research project.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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GEOG 256-01 10301 |
Medical Geography |
Days: M W F
|
Time: 02:20 pm-03:20 pm
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Room: CARN 06A
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Instructor: Eric Carter
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Avail./Max.: 7 / 30
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*First day attendance required*
Details
This course examines the geographical dimensions of health and disease, emphasizing global and domestic public health issues. Key approaches and themes include the social determinants of health; how place influences individual health; epidemiological mapping and spatial analysis; environmental health; environmental justice; the relationship among demographic change, economic development, and population health; the geography of pandemics; the disease ecology approach to infectious and vector-borne diseases; and the challenges of "global health" in the 21st century, with special emphasis on "emerging infectious diseases."
General Education Requirements:
Internationalism
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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GEOG 258-01 10806 |
Geography of Environmental Hazards |
Days: M W F
|
Time: 10:50 am-11:50 am
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Room: CARN 105
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Instructor: Eric Carter
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Avail./Max.: 4 / 16
|
*First day attendance required; cross-listed with ENVI 258-01*
Details
The study of environmental hazards stands at a key point of intersection between the natural and social sciences. Geography, with its focus on human-environment interactions, provides key analytical tools for understanding the complex causes and uneven impacts of hazards around the world. We will explore the geophysical nature and social dimensions of disasters caused by floods, droughts, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, and wildfires. For each of these hazard types, we apply theoretical concepts from major hazards research paradigms, including quantifying the human and economic impacts of disaster; assessing, managing, and mitigating risk; and reducing the impacts of disaster, not only through engineering works but also by reducing social vulnerability and enhancing adaptive capacity. Looking into the future, we will discuss how global-scale processes, such as climate change and globalization, might affect the frequency, intensity, and geographical distribution of environmental hazards in the decades to come.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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GEOG 261-01 10817 |
Geography of World Urbanization |
Days: M W F
|
Time: 09:40 am-10:40 am
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Room: CARN 06A
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Instructor: Jesse McClelland
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Avail./Max.: 2 / 20
|
*First day attendance required*
Details
We now live in a world where the majority of the population already lives in cities. And yet every year, hundreds of millions of people continue to move into cities to pursue a better future. The contemporary social, economic, and political changes are intrinsically linked to divergent urban processes across the world. This paramount shift poses important theoretical and empirical questions to our age. This course uses the critical perspective of "global urbanism" to both contextualize and connect different urban experiences across places. We will introduce various urban settings and demonstrate how complex relations between urbanization, globalization, and economic development produce spatial unevenness and social inequality. We will study the dominant paradigm of world and global cities, which prioritizes development trajectories of cities in the global North, and discuss contesting views focusing on "ordinary cities" from the global South. Drawing on case studies in the developed and less-developed world, we will also learn how to apply the relational comparative urbanism approach as well as regionally based theoretical perspectives to comprehend the diverse urban landscapes around the globe.
General Education Requirements:
Internationalism
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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GEOG 262-01 10302 |
Metro Analysis |
Days: M W F
|
Time: 01:10 pm-02:10 pm
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Room: CARN 107
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Instructor: Laura Smith
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Avail./Max.: -1 / 25
|
Details
This course focuses on the foundations of American urban development, from economic development to land use to housing patterns, and examines how and why urban housing markets operate as they do within American metropolitan regions. Topics covered in the course include: the metropolitan economy, land use patterns, urban housing supply and demand, the geography of urban housing markets, racial residential segregation, suburbanization, transportation, and public policy debates. By the end of the course, students will have mastered some of the methods used to describe metropolitan organization and change, and be able to analyze how changes in the economy and society relate to metropolitan land use.
General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q2
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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GEOG 294-01 10303 |
Earth and Environment: Elements of Physical Geography |
Days: T R
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Time: 01:20 pm-02:50 pm
|
Room: HUM 216
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Instructor: Xavier Haro-Carrion
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Avail./Max.: 1 / 20
|
*First day attendance required; cross-listed with ENVI 294-01*
Details
This course introduces the student to an area of study that brings together and interrelates patterns and processes that drive Earth’s physical environments, including human interactions with the physical environment. Among other topics, we will learn about the principles and mechanisms of climate and weather, water resources, landforms, earth surface processes, landscapes, vegetation, and ecosystems at global and regional scales. We will also learn how the spatial and temporal patterns of these processes are interpreted and understood using maps produced from Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Global Position System (GPS) and satellite imagery. Using selected studies we will also examine the social forces that shape many of these systems to gain a broader understanding of the socio-environmental interconnections of these physical environments. The course consists of lectures, discussions, hands-on exercises, field excursions, and exams.
General Education Requirements:
Distribution Requirements:
Natural science and mathematics
Course Materials
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GEOG 294-02 10304 |
Building a More Inclusive Healthcare System: Collaborative Research with Family Tree Clinic |
Days: M W F
|
Time: 03:30 pm-04:30 pm
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Room: CARN 06A
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Instructor: Daniel Trudeau
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Avail./Max.: Closed 2 / 20
|
*First day attendance required*
Details
This course offers a collaborative project with the Family Tree Clinic, a community-based provider of reproductive and sexual health services, located in Minneapolis. For the past five years the clinic has studied the barriers affecting socially marginalized communities' access to the health care system in Minnesota. Clinic staff have collected dozens of interviews with people who are underserved by the current system. By centering their perspectives and experiences, students will collaborate with Family Tree Clinic staff to identify ways of working toward health equity at Family Tree Clinic and beyond. Students' core contributions will be made through a qualitative research project analyzing the interview transcripts, distilling essential themes, and identifying courses of action. Through this work, students will develop their capacities for collaboration and group work; learn qualitative data analysis techniques, research ethics, and project management skills; and expand their understanding of health disparities and equity as well as the geography of health care access. The class will generate a report for Family Tree Clinic that will inform its efforts to build a more inclusive healthcare system.
General Education Requirements:
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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GEOG 294-04 10306 |
Political Geographies of South Asia |
Days: M W F
|
Time: 02:20 pm-03:20 pm
|
Room: CARN 105
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Instructor: Rupak Shrestha
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Avail./Max.: 5 / 20
|
*Cross-listed with ASIA 294-03*
Details
This course provides interdisciplinary textual and visual materials to examine historical and contemporary processes through which to understand everyday politics in South Asia, with a deep focus on how macropolitics affect the scale of the local, the body, and the community. Course materials are based on studies of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. In these varied spaces in South Asia, students will engage with materials that focus particularly on, and from, the margins, frontiers, and borderlands of these contemporary states. Students will learn from academic writing, documentary photography, and film to understand how South Asia is not a fixed place or a timeless regional entity. Rather, drawing on Doreen Massey’s “a global sense of place”, students will learn about South Asia through the lens of relationality, transnational flows, and local-global connections of humans and non-humans. In addition, the course focuses on transnational homes and representations for South Asians in the diaspora. We are placed quite well to engage with the sizable South Asian community in the Twin Cities. Course topics include development, memory, colonialism, nation, bureaucracy, indigeneity, youth, religion, gender, political ecology, urban life, mobility, diaspora.
General Education Requirements:
Internationalism
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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GEOG 362-01 10307 |
Remote Sensing of the Environment |
Days: T R
|
Time: 09:40 am-11:10 am
|
Room: CARN 109
|
Instructor: Xavier Haro-Carrion
|
Avail./Max.: 0 / 12
|
*Permission of instructor required; first day attendance required; cross-listed with ENVI 394-02*
Details
Remote Sensing of the Environment is designed to introduce the student to the theory and application of digital imagery data in geographical research. It emphasizes fundamental remote sensing concepts and utilizes remotely sensed data for analyzing human-environmental issues such as deforestation, reforestation, urban expansion, or other change in land surface across space or time. The focus of this course is on the interpretation and applications of data from spaceborne imaging systems (e.g. Landsat, Landsat, MODIS, Sentinel-2), but other sources of remote sensing data (e.g. unmanned aerial vehicles) will be introduced too. The course consists of lecture periods to provide a comprehensive understanding of concepts, labs that take you through the major mapping and analysis methods using the software Erdas Imagine, and student projects. A basic understanding of geographic data is necessary to take this class. Students can satisfy this requirement by completing Geog 225 (or similar) or by completing an asynchronous module provided by the instructor through Moodle prior to the beginning of class. Prerequisite(s): GEOG 225 or permission of instructor.
General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q3
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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GEOG 378-01 10309 |
Statistical Research Methods in Geography |
Days: M W F
|
Time: 10:50 am-11:50 am
|
Room: CARN 107
|
Instructor: Laura Smith
|
Avail./Max.: 7 / 25
|
*For Geography majors only, or permission of instructor*
Details
This course focuses on the statistical methods that geographers use to describe and analyze places and themes. Students will learn both descriptive and inferential statistical methods for use in geographical research, including exploratory data analysis techniques, spatial statistics, geographic sampling, hypothesis testing, and regression analysis. The course provides students with experience in the application of statistical methods to spatial problems through the use of statistical software. Students will also learn to evaluate and develop statistical research designs, including preparation and presentation of an original research project. Prerequisite(s): Geography major or permission of instructor.
General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q3
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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GEOG 394-01 10310 |
Visual Storytelling: Researching with Digital and Visual Materials and Creating Visual Narratives |
Days: T R
|
Time: 09:40 am-11:10 am
|
Room: OLRI 300
|
Instructor: Rupak Shrestha
|
Avail./Max.: Closed 0 / 15
|
*First day attendance required; cross-listed with ANTH 394-02 and MCST 394-01*
Details
Central to research is storytelling. This course provides the theoretical and methodological toolkits that students will use to conduct visual research in Geography and the Social Sciences. Drawing on Gillian Rose’s Visual Methodologies, the course surveys topics including research ethics, visual culture, discourse analysis, digital methods, participant observation and community-based research practices, and visual representation. Students will develop skills to observe, record, and analyze issues and processes in the local community in the Twin Cities through semester-long visual research projects by making still (photography) and moving (film) images. In addition, students will work on individual and group projects for hands-on experience on other digital methods. There are no prerequisites for this course and no prior background knowledge in visual methods or tools are required.
General Education Requirements:
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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GEOG 478-01 10311 |
Cities of the 21st Century: The Political Economy of Urban Sustainability |
Days: T R
|
Time: 03:00 pm-04:30 pm
|
Room: CARN 05
|
Instructor: Daniel Trudeau
|
Avail./Max.: 2 / 16
|
*Permission of instructor required; first day attendance required; cross-listed with ENVI 478-01*
Details
The purpose of this course is to understand the practices and concepts that constitute the movement for sustainable cities and investigate the ways in which urban sustainability initiatives are generated and how they vary geographically. The course adopts a political economy perspective to trace the complex interactions of institutions, politics, and economic systems that shape initiatives for more sustainable cities. Students will work in the first part of the course to enhance their understanding of core concepts and best practices that constitute the professional field of sustainable urban development and assemble a framework for analyzing the ways in which sustainability initiatives come to fruition and approach the idea of sustainability in a particular way. Equipped with this framework, we then analyze case studies in the second part of course that focus on the meaning of sustainability, its practice internationally, and the ultimate impact of these practices on ecological balance, economic sustainability, and social equity in the urban environment. Toward these ends, students will conduct a semester-long capstone research project that investigates a particular urban sustainability initiative in the world by tracing the political economy of its creation and considering its impact on society, economy, and environment. Prerequisite(s): Permission of instructor.
General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Distribution Requirements:
Social science
Course Materials
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