The Urban Studies program teaches students to analyze the city, urban life, and urbanization through a variety of disciplinary lenses. Students learn where cities come from, how they grow, thrive, and decline, how they are organized, and how to construct meaningful, inclusive, secure, and sustainable places. The curriculum examines how urban problems arise, how they have been previously addressed, and how to plan cities of the future. Concentrators enjoy the breadth of courses in American Studies, economics, history, literature, history of art and architecture, political science, sociology, and planning as well as provide in-depth courses integrating those perspectives. We introduce the fundamentals of Urban Studies scholarship as well as intense examination of an urban problem in focused seminars. These advanced seminars offer opportunities to write extensive and synthetic interdisciplinary analyses that serve as capstones to the concentration. The program’s 10-course curriculum provides sufficient flexibility to allow students to pursue specific urban interests or to take courses in urban focus areas of Built Environment; Humanities; Social Sciences; and Sustainable Urbanism. The Program insures that students master at least one basic research methodology and perform research or fieldwork projects, which may result in an honors thesis. Fieldwork training includes working with local agencies and nonprofit organizations on practical urban problems. Capstone projects entail original research papers in Urban Studies seminars; academically supervised video, artistic, or community service projects; and Honors Theses for eligible concentrators.
For a concentration, the program requires ten courses selected from four course groups:
| Introduction (choose one): | 1 | |
| City Politics | ||
| The City: An Introduction to Urban Studies | ||
| Research Skills (choose one): | 1 | |
| Introduction to Econometrics | ||
| Introductory Statistics for Education Research and Policy Analysis | ||
| Political Research Methods | ||
| Methods of Social Research | ||
| Introductory Statistics for Social Research 1 | ||
| Core Courses (choose three courses covering three of the seven core areas -American Civilization, Economics, History, History of Art and Architecture, Literature, Political Science, and Sociology, from the following: | 3 | |
| Technology and Material Culture in America: The Urban Built Environment | ||
| Technology and Material Culture in America: The Automobile in American Life | ||
| Cities of Sound: Place and History in American Pop Music | ||
| Urban Life: Anthropology in and of the City | ||
| City (B)Lights | ||
| Urban Economics | ||
| The Economy of China since 1949 | ||
| City Novels | ||
| Sustainable Design in the Built Environment | ||
| Nineteenth-Century Architecture | ||
| History of Rhode Island Architecture | ||
| Modern Architecture | ||
| Contemporary Architecture | ||
| City and Cinema | ||
| Film Architecture | ||
| American Urban History to 1870 | ||
| American Urban History, 1870-1950 | ||
| City Politics | ||
| Urban Politics and Urban Public Policy | ||
| Remaking the City | ||
| Social Exclusion | ||
| The United States Metropolis, 1945-2000 | ||
| Regional Planning | ||
| Sustainable Urbanism | ||
| Crime and Policing | ||
| Guts of the City: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Urban Infrastructure and Environmental Planning | ||
| Seminar courses (choose three) 2 | 3 | |
| City of the American Century: The Culture and Politics of Urbanism in Postwar New York City | ||
| Urbanization in China | ||
| Policy Implementation in Education | ||
| City, Culture, and Literature in the Early Twentieth Century | ||
| Reading New York | ||
| Ethnic Los Angeles | ||
| Introduction to Geographic Information Systems for Environmental Applications | ||
| Architecture of Downtown Providence from Late Nineteenth Century to the Present | ||
| The Urban Crisis and American Political Culture, 1932-1984 | ||
| Ethnic Los Angeles | ||
| Urban Politics | ||
| GIS and Public Policy | ||
| Principles and Methods of Geographic Information Systems | ||
| Geographical Analysis of Society | ||
| Urban Sociology | ||
| Fieldwork in the Urban Community | ||
| Fieldwork in Urban Archaeology and Historical Preservation | ||
| Urbanization in China | ||
| American Culture and the City | ||
| The Environment Built: Urban Environmental History and Urban Environmentalism for the 21st Century | ||
| Downtown Development | ||
| Green Cities: Parks and Designed Landscapes in Urban America | ||
| Housing and Homelessness | ||
| Rivers and Cities | ||
| The Changing American City | ||
| The Politics of Community Organizing | ||
| Urban Regimes in the American Republic | ||
| The Cultural and Social Life of the Built Environment | ||
| Representing the Twentieth-Century City | ||
| Cities in Mind: Modern Urban Thought and Theory | ||
| Land Use Planning: The Future of the I-195 Parcels | ||
| Complementary Curriculum (choose two from the following options): | 2 | |
1. Any course from the Introductory or Basic Curriculum options above not used to fulfill another requirement | ||
2. Any of the following: | ||
| Race, Gender, and Urban Politics | ||
| African-American Life in the City | ||
| Boston: A City Through Time | ||
| Popular Music and the City | ||
| Making America: Twentieth-Century U.S. Immigrant/Ethnic Literature | ||
| Oral History and Community Memory | ||
| Charles Chapin and the Urban Public Health Movement | ||
| Two Billion Cars: Humans, Markets, Cultures, and the Automobile | ||
| City and Sanctuary in the Ancient World | ||
| Cities and Urban Space in the Ancient World | ||
| City and the Festival: Cult Practices and Architectural Production in the Ancient Near East | ||
| Archaeologies of the Near East | ||
| How Houses Build People | ||
| The Archaeology of College Hill | ||
| Tales of Two Cities: Havana - Miami, San Juan - New York | ||
| Education, the Economy and School Reform | ||
| Harlem Renaissance: The Politics of Culture | ||
| Land Use and Built Environment: An entrepreneurial view | ||
| Wild Literature in the Urban Landscape | ||
| Environmental Law and Policy | ||
| Urban Agriculture: The Importance of Localized Food Systems | ||
| Working with Communities: Cultural Competence and Ethics | ||
| Analysis and Resolution of Environmental Problems/Case Studies | ||
| The Fate of the Coast: Land Use and Public Policy in an Era of Rising Seas | ||
| Seminar on Latino Politics in the United States | ||
| Berlin: A City Strives to Reinvent Itself | ||
| Urban Modernity and the Middle East | ||
| Gold, Wool and Stone: Painters and Bankers in Renaissance Tuscany | ||
| Constructing the Eternal City: Popes and Pilgrims in Renaissance Rome | ||
| Pompeii | ||
| Renaissance Venice and the Veneto | ||
| Images and the Making of London in the Nineteenth Century | ||
| The City of Paris: Urbanism and Architecture from the Tenth through the Twentieth Centuries | ||
| The Architecture and Urbanism of Modern Istanbul | ||
| Contemporary American Urbanism: City Design and Planning, 1945-2000 | ||
| Water and Architecture | ||
| Samurai and Merchants, Prostitutes and Priests: Japanese Urban Culture in the Early Modern Period | ||
| History of Brazil | ||
| Modernity, Jews, and Urban Identity in Central Europe, 1867-1938 | ||
| Cities and Urban Culture in China | ||
| City as Modernity:Popular Culture, Mass Consumption, Urban Entertainment in Nineteenth-Century Paris | ||
| Japanese Cities: Tokyo and Kyoto | ||
| African American Politics | ||
| Infrastructure Policy | ||
| Policy Analysis and Program Evaluation | ||
| Urban Policy Challenges | ||
| Urban Revitalization: Lessons from the Providence Plan | ||
| American Heritage: Democracy, Inequality, and Public Policy | ||
| Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the Modern World | ||
| Human Needs and Social Services | ||
other options with the approval of the concentration advisors | ||
3. RISD courses approved by the Urban Studies Program each semester as applicable to the Urban Studies concentration. 3 | ||
| Total Credits | 10 | |
| 1 | There are also other statistics courses offered by other departments (e.g., Applied Mathematics, Cognitive Sciences, and Psychology). On occasion, an alternative research skills course may be approved for a specific concentration. |
| 2 | The courses provide opportunities to undertake research or fieldwork projects and all qualify as "capstone" experiences. |
| 3 | No more than two may be used to satisfy the requirements of this concentration. The RISD course is identified in the student's record at Brown by a RISD course code. |
Off-Campus Courses: Some courses taken outside Brown (e.g., in study abroad programs) may be used for credit towards the concentration if the material covered directly corresponds to that taught in Brown courses, or is relevant to the complementary curriculum. Such courses will be approved each semester by the concentration advisor.
Honors Candidates for Honors must have above average grades and shall apply for this distinction in writing to the Director of the Program by the middle of the second semester of their junior year. They shall include a cover letter with a brief statement of the intended research proposal as well as the name of the member of the Urban Studies faculty who would serve as their advisor and with whom they must work closely. Twelve courses are required for Honors concentrator, two in addition to the ten courses required for a standard program. In fall semester, honors thesis students shall enroll in an independent reading and research course with their adviser (URBN 1970 in their adviser’s section) or take an additional research skills course, and in the Spring, they shall take the Honors Thesis Workshop (URBN 1981). The candidate's final thesis must be of outstanding quality, in order to qualify for honors.