Undergraduate Course Syllabi

  • URB STD 250-001 Exploring the Urban Environment , Spring 2025
    Instructor: Sana Avar (sanaavar@uwm.edu)
    This course explores the various aspects of urban life, including its physical environments, social interactions, economic influences, and environmental issues. Together, we will examine the factors that shape cities and discover how to design spaces that are both sustainable and enjoyable for residents. You will investigate how urban environments affect everyday life, influencing our routines, relationships, spending behaviors, and beyond. We will also consider what attracts individuals and families to particular urban neighborhoods, looking at elements such as employment opportunities, social connections, transportation options, and living costs. By the end of the course, you will be equipped with the skills to analyze and critically assess cities and their surroundings. This class integrates perspectives from architecture, urban planning, design, history, and more, providing you with a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics that affect cities and their inhabitants.

  • URB STD 360-201 Perspectives on the Urban Scene: Green Cities: UrbanAgri, Sustain. & Envir Justice, Spring 2025
    Instructor: Maria Rose Francis (franci54@uwm.edu)
    "This course explores the complex intersections of environmental justice, urban agriculture, and sustainability within rapidly changing urban landscapes. As cities grow, the strain on resources, social equity, and environmental health intensifies. This course critically examines these issues through the lens of environmental justice movements, urban agriculture initiatives, green infrastructure, and smart city technologies. Students will engage with diverse case studies from different cities that highlight both the successes and challenges of urban sustainability efforts, focusing particularly on the role of marginalized communities in shaping these processes. The course encourages students to critically assess how policies, practices, and grassroots movements interact within urban settings to either exacerbate or alleviate issues of inequality, environmental degradation, and social exclusion. Through active debates, video projects, and interactive digital humanities tools, students will develop a comprehensive understanding of how different urban strategies, ranging from tactical urbanism to smart technologies, can either reinforce or challenge existing social and environmental inequities. The course will emphasize practical skills and critical thinking, preparing students to contribute to more just and sustainable urban futures."

  • URB STD 377-001 Urbanism and Urbanization , Fall 2024
    Instructor: Jamie Harris (jmh@uwm.edu)
    The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the process of urbanization and the nature of urban society. Students will be exposed to a variety of classic and contemporary urban theorists and different methodological approaches to the study of urban areas as they investigate several substantive urban topics and case studies to account for the changing social and spatial patterns of cities and metropolitan regions. By the end of the semester, students will be familiar with a number of key theorists and interpretive frameworks and be able to apply that knowledge to help make sense of, and consider solutions for, a number of central issues facing cities and regions today such as globalization, urban growth and decline, immigration, concentrated poverty and urban sprawl, regional governance, transportation, and sustainable development, among others, and the implications of each for the urban form. This is a required course for urban studies majors. Notes: Sociol 377 & Urb Std 377 are jointly- offered; they count as repeats of one another. Prereq: jr st & a Sociol 100-level course; or Urb Std 250(P). *

  • URB STD 450-001 Urban Growth and Development: A Global View , Spring 2024
    Instructor: Jamie Harris (jmh@uwm.edu)
    Urbanization is advancing at an unprecedented rate around the world, with most of that growth occurring in the “developing” Global South, often in informal settlements. More than 1 billion people now reside in informal settlements, and many megacities will be approaching populations of 30 million over the next decade. Rapid urbanization, and the shadow cities that accompany this kind of development can have broad implications for urban poverty and inequality, migration, and the impacts of climate change. Along with this explosion of urbanization, the last two decades have witnessed much new theorizing and empirical research focused on cities and urbanized regions of the Global South. Many of these scholars have challenged conventional urban theory and critiqued the field of urban studies that emerged in the 20th century for its decidedly European and North American orientation. Unable to fully account for the complexity and diverse historical, political and cultural basis of different urbanisms that were emerging, these scholars, many from outside the West, began to formulate new approaches and concepts to more fully understand urban change and development. This interdisciplinary, hybrid course will examine some of these debates and explore some of this new empirical work as we delve into an array of urban contexts across several regions and countries outside the U.S. Particular attention will be given to urban informality and territories of exclusion in Brazil, Ghana, and India; state-led urbanization in China; Global City formations in a number of cities; greening cities and climate disaster and resilience in Europe, Asia, and Canada; urban citizenship, tactical urbanism and 'right to the city' campaigns, and the role of urban space in shaping and fostering political mobilization for gender equality, poor people, and climate justice, across a number of cities and countries.

  • URB STD 499-001 Ad Hoc: Exploring Community Gardens, Spring 2025
    Instructor: Arijit Sen (sena@uwm.edu)

  • URB STD 600-001 Capstone Seminar in Urban Studies , Spring 2025
    Instructor: Jamie Harris (jmh@uwm.edu)
    This course is designed to provide a capstone experience for urban studies majors in their senior year (or junior year for accelerated BA-MUP students). This course will help students to develop a fuller understanding of urban studies as an interdisciplinary field, with its distinct subject areas, theoretical frameworks, and methodologies for conducting research— in short, what it means to be an urbanist. There are several goals in mind for this course: 1. To provide exposure to the field of urban studies and urban studies scholarship- what it means to be an urbanist. 2. To develop the skills necessary to plan, conduct, and evaluate urban research. 3. To apply these skills to a relevant urban-related subject matter. 4. To present your research in a public forum. This course also fulfills the L&S research requirement. This course will be run as a seminar with close reading and discussion of several articles that relate to urban studies scholarship and the research process. There will be a number of small assignments to help students develop their final research project in a workshop environment.