URBS 310 - Urban Inequality

1 unit(s)

This course looks at urban inequality - its meaning, its complexity, its causes, and its implications. As centers of political power and capital accumulation, cities have long been sites of socio-economic, spatial, racial and other forms of inequality. The reproduction of inequality - in the US and elsewhere - happens, to a considerable extent, in cities and by urban processes. This course is designed to allow (and force) students to explore the complicated, layered inequality that characterizes cities. How is economic inequality linked - as cause and effect - to political, racial, educational and spatial inequality? How are these inequalities reflected in and reinforced by the built environment? How is inequality within cities linked to globalization, and to neo-liberal policies in the US? How can we intervene, to make our cities more equal and more “just”? How can urban residents articulate and assert their “right to the city”? And how do the answers to these questions vary from city to city? Timothy Koechlin.

Not offered in 2017/18.