1 - 10 of 13 results for: URBANST

What makes San Francisco distinctive as a city? How have designers, architects, builders and planners shaped the city, and how does their work affect San Francisco and its people? This Urban Studies pop-up class will introduce students to the unique architecture and urbanism of San Francisco. A series of three guided walking tours will provide an insider's perspective on the City's most interesting neighborhoods and will also explore core themes and topics in the field of urban design. An informal 90 minute on-campus discussion and slideshow of student-generated imagery (on the Thursday evening following each tour) will allow for an expanded conversation about the urban environment. This course is intended for freshmen and sophomores.

Core course for Urban Studies majors. We will study urban space both historically and cross-culturally. Urban Studies, by definition, is an interdisciplinary field, where the methodological approaches draw upon a diverse set of analytic tools. Disciplines that occupy a prominent place in this class are geography, cultural anthropology, sociology, history, media studies, and literature. In this context, we will discuss the importance of cities around the world to the economic, cultural, and political well-being of modern societies and examine how forces such as industrialization, decentralization, and globalization affect the structure and function of cities.

Invited lecture series. Perspectives and endeavors of entrepreneurs and thought leaders who address social needs in the U.S. and internationally through private, for-profit and nonprofit organizations or public institutions. The lecture and Q&A is from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., followed by an optional discussion period with the speaker including dinner.

Casablanca, Algiers and Tunis embody three territories, real and imaginary, which never cease to challenge the preconceptions of travelers setting sight on their shores. In this class, we will explore the myriad ways in which these cities of North Africa, on the edge of Europe and of Africa, have been narrated in literature, cinema, and popular culture. We will look at the historical development shaping their respective architecture and why they became the three major urban centers in North Africa. Home to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, they are an ebullient laboratory of social, political, religious, and cultural issues, global and local, between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. We will look at mass images of these cities, from films to maps, novels to photographs, sketching a new vision of these magnets as places where power, social rituals, legacies of the Ottoman and French colonial past, and the influence of the global economy collude and collide. Special focus on class, gender, and race. Open to both undergrad and grad students!

Environmental justice means ensuring equal access to environmental benefits and preventing the disproportionate impacts of environmental harms for all communities regardless of gender, class, race, ethnicity or other social positions. This introductory course examines the rhetoric, history and key case studies of environmental justice while encouraging critical and collaborative thinking, reading and researching about diversity in environmental movements within the global community and at Stanford, including the ways race, class and gender have shaped environmental battles still being fought today from Standing Rock to Flint, Michigan. We center diverse voices by bringing leaders, particularly from marginalized communities on the frontlines to our classroom to communicate experiences, insights and best practices. Together we will develop and present original research projects which may serve a particular organizational or community need, such as racialized dispossession, toxic pollution and human health, or indigenous land and water rights, among many others.

Service-learning course that exposes students to sustainability concepts and urban planning as a tool for determining sustainable outcomes in the Bay Area. Focus will be on the relationship of land use and transportation planning to housing and employment patterns, mobility, public health, and social equity. Topics will include government initiatives to counteract urban sprawl and promote smart growth and livability, political realities of organizing and building coalitions around sustainability goals, and increasing opportunities for low-income and communities of color to achieve sustainability outcomes. Students will participate in team-based projects in collaboration with local community partners and take part in significant off-site fieldwork. Prerequisites: consent of the instructor. (Cardinal Course certified by the Haas Center.)

For Urban Studies majors only. Students organize an internship in an office of a government agency, a community organization, or a private firm directly relevant to the major. Reading supplements internship. Paper summarizes internship experience and related readings.