Fall 2008 courses

Please check the Registrar for the most up-to-date course information.

Syllabi not found online may be available in the Urban Studies office, Room 130 McNeil Building.

URBS-010.401 Homelessness and Urban Inequality
F 2-5 Culhane
(x-list AFRC-041)
FRESHMAN SEMINAR
This seminar in Urban Studies introduces students to many of the major social issues confronting our nation’s cities by focusing specifically on the problem of urban homelessness. The course examines the treatment of homelessness and extreme impoverishment as social problems historically, as well as through contemporary debates. Several areas of intensive study will include the prevalence and dynamics of homelessness, the affordable housing crisis, urban labor market trends, welfare reform, health and mental health policies, and urban/suburban development disparities. Particular attention is also paid to the structure of emergency services for people who have housing emergencies. The course concludes by examining current policies and advocacy strategies.

URBS-103.401 The Industrial Metropolis
R 1:30-4:30 Vitiello
(x-list HIST-209)
History & Tradition Sector (All Classes)
Although most U.S. cities are no longer thought of as "industrial cities," metropolitan areas today are all products of industrial economies, technologies, and social systems. This course explores the ways in which industrialization and deindustrialization haveshaped North American cities over the past two centuries. Major themes include economic geography, ecology, labor and production, suburbanization, outsourcing, and the history and future of energy. The class will take regular walking tours of Philadelphia neighborhoods.

URBS-112.401 Urban Sociology
W 2-5 Staff
(x-list SOCI-011/AFRC-011)
Dist. I: Society (class of 09 and prior)
A comprehensive introduction to the sociological study of cities. Topics will include theories of urbanism, methods of research, migration, history of cities, gentrification, poverty, urban politics, suburbanization and globalization. Philadelphia will be used as a recurring example, though the course will devote attention to cities around the U.S. and the world.

URBS-139.401 Ancient Civilizations of the World
TR 1:30-3 Zettler
(x-list NELC 182/ANTH 139)
History & Tradition Sector (All Classes)
The archaeology of the complex societies of the Old and New Worlds from the end of the paleolithic up to and including the earliest civilizations.

URBS-160.401 Race & Ethnic Relations
MW 10-11 Kao (must also register for recitation, see below)
(x-list SOCI 006/ASAM 006)
Gen. Req. 1: Society (class of 09 and prior)
The course will examine how social networks, neighborhood context, culture, and notions of race affect inequality and ethnic relations. The course reviews the studies of ethnic entrepreneurship, urban segregation, labor force
participation, and assimilation processes. The course emphasizes how inequality affects ethnic relations as well as the economic and social integration of different groups in society.

Recitation:
URBS-160.402 F 11-12;
URBS-160.403 F 10-11

URBS-178.401 Faculty-Student Collaborative Action Seminar: Urban-University Community Relations
W 2-5 Harkavy
(x-list HIST-214)
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN SEMINAR
an academically based community service course
One of the seminar's aims is to help students develop their capacity to solve strategic, real-world problems by working collaboratively in the classroom and in the West Philadelphia community. Students work as members of research teams to help solve universal problems (e.g., poverty, poor schooling, inadequate health care, etc.) as they are manifested in Penn's local geographic community of West Philadelphia. The seminar currently focuses on improving education, specifically college and career readiness and pathways. Specifically, students focus their problem-solving research at Sayre High School in West Philadelphia, which functions as the real-world site for the seminar's activities. Students typically are engaged in academically based service-learning at the Sayre School, with the primary activities occurring on Mondays from 3-5. Other arrangements can be made at the school if needed. Another goal of the seminar is to help students develop proposals as to how a Penn undergraduate education might better empower students to produce, not simply "consume," societally-useful knowledge, as well as function as life-long societally-useful citizens.

URBS-200.301 Introduction to Urban Research
R 5-8 Goldstein
Fulfills Quantitative Data Analysis Requirement This course will examine different ways of undertaking urban research. The goal will be to link substantive research questions to appropriate research methods. Micro-computer based quantitative methods, demographic techniques, and ethnographic approaches will be the primary foci of the course. In addition to classroom assignments, students will have the opportunity to undertake their own research involving micro-based statistical analysis of data files which address relevant and timely public policy issues.

URBS-202.401 Urban Education
T 4:30-7:30 Throop
(x-list EDUC-202)
Dist. I: Society (class of 09 and prior)
This course is an introduction to many of the key issues confronting urban public schools in America. In this course, we will examine some of the historical, social, and cultural contexts of urban education, as well as look at issues and events directly affecting the Philadelphia public schools. This class will enable students to gain a multifaceted understanding of urban education through the integration of direct observation and participation in Philadelphia public schools with class readings and discussions. We will also examine and critique recent reforms and policies, which have been designed to remedy the urban public school "crisis". This course will enable students to gain a critical framework for perceiving urban education as they develop a sensitive understanding of the complex issues confronting urban schools.

URBS-204.001 Urban Law
MW 2-3:30 Keene
Dist. I: Society (class of 09 and prior)
Download Syllabus [PDF]
This course will focus on selected aspects of urban law that are particularly relevant to areas of high population density. After an introduction to the American judicial system it will examine the governance of urban areas (state and local government law) and the management of urban growth (land use controls and other techniques for regulating new development).

URBS-220.401 Jews and the City
R 1:30-4:30 Wenger
(x-list HIST 214)
Download Syllabus [PDF]
Jews have always been an extraordinarily urban people. This seminar explores various aspects of the Jewish encounter with the city, examining the ways that Jewish culture has been shaped by and has helped to shape urban culture. We will focus on both European and American cities and consider Jewish involvement in political, social and cultural life, the various neighborhoods in which Jews have lived, relations with other ethnic groups, as well as many other topics. We will read some classic works in the field along with contemporary scholarship.

URBS-226.401 Photography of Urban Place COURSE CANCELED
R 4-7 Jacobson
(x-list FNAR-226/FNAR-626)

URBS-240.401 Education in American Culture
TR 10:30-12 McLoyd
(x-ist EDUC-240)
This course examines the principle relationships between social structure, meritocratic ideology, credentialing processes, inequality, political culture and education in America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

URBS-272.301 Architecture, Location, and Class
M 2-5 Thomas
Dist. III: Arts & Letters (class of 09 and prior)
This course studies the architecture of Philadelphia from the perspectives of aesthetic and social history. Relationships between architectural patronage, design and location, and community values will be examined and their implications for understanding the built environment will be analyzed.

URBS-290.301 Metropolitan Nature
T 3-6 Nairn
Metropolitan nature explores the relationship between the natural and the built world through the production of urban landscapes. We will critically examine their evolution and the dichotomy between the natural processes on which our cities depend and the urban spaces we have constructed. Through readings, discussions and field trips, the course will explore urban ecology and the political, social, and cultural forces behind the development of our watersheds and water supplies, the metropolitan forest and ideas of constructed nature such as Central Park, our food supply and urban agriculture, and environmental justice and democracy.

URBS-291-401 Multiculturalism: Theory & Practice
T 1:30-4:30 Sanday
(x-list ANTH 290)
"The challenge in renewing the ethnographic and anthropological voice in the 21st century is not the disappearance of difference, of different cultures, or of ways of organizing society any more than it is not the disappearance of class, capital, unequal exchange, power, or gender relations. On the contrary, the challenge is that the interactions of various kinds of cultures are becoming more complex and differentiated at the same time as new forms of globalization and modernization are bringing all parts of the earth into
greater, uneven, polycentric interaction." - Michael Fischer, Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice, 2003

URBS-312-401 Health in Urban Communities
TR 9-10:30 Johnston
(x-list ANTH 312)
This course will introduce students to anthropological approaches to health and to theories of participatory action research. This combined theoretical perspective will then be put into practice using West Philadelphia community schools as a case study. Students will become involved in design and implementation of health-related projects at an urban elementary or middle school. As one of the course requirements, students will be expected to produce a detailed research proposal for future implementation.

URBS-320.401 Who Gets Elected and Why
M 6-9 Rendell
(x-list PSCI-320/GAFL-710)
Course participants will study the stages and strategies in running for public office and discuss the role of various influences on getting elected, including campaign finance and fundraising, demographics, polling, the media, staffing, economics, party organization, etc. The course will also examine how electoral politics varies by level--city, state, national. Students will analyze campaign case studies and the career of the instructor, himself. The instructor will also bring in speakers who can provide other perspectives on electoral politics. The instructor is the former Mayor of Philadelphia, Chair of the Democratic National Committee, and is currently the Governor of Pennsylvania .

URBS-322.401 Big Pictures: Mural Art
W 1-4; F 9-12 Golden/Walinsky
(x-list FNAR-222/FNAR-622)
This class will be taught by Jane Golden, Director of the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. The class will explore the history of murals around the world, as well as the role that murals play today in Philadelphia neighborhoods. The capstone of the class will be a group mural project. Students will have the opportunity to see the mural process all the way through—from the wall selection—to community outreach—to design approval—to painting—to the dedication.

URBS-323.401 Tutoring in Urban Public Schools: Theory and Practice
M 6-9 Staff
(x -list EDUC-323)
Academically Based Community Service Course; Dist I: Society (class or 09 and prior)
This course represents an opportunity for undergraduate students to participate in academically based community service involving tutoring in a West Philadelphia public school. This course will serve a need for those students who are already tutoring through the West Philadelphia Tutoring Project or other campus tutoring programs, and it will also be available to individuals who are interested in tutoring for the first time.

URBS-327.401 Research as Public Work: A Real-World Project to Help Create a New West Phila. High School
R 1:30-4:30 Puckett/Simon
(x-list EDUC 410)
An Academically Based Community Service course
This course involves Penn undergraduate students in action research and the co-development of innovative curricular resources for the creation of several new theme-based high schools in West Philadelphia, currently envisioned as separate units of a new West Philadelphia High School campus, which is projected to open in the fall of 2009. This new academically based community service course will be organized as a “think-tank” seminar and co-taught by John Puckett, associate professor at the Graduate School of Education; Richard Redding, director of community planning at the Philadelphia City Planning Commission; Elaine Simon, co-director of the Urban Studies Program and co-founder of Research for Action; and Eric Braxton, former director of the Philadelphia Student Union and community planner with the West Philadelphia High School Sustainability Circle. More specifically, as the starting point of a multiyear project, the seminar will engage Penn and West Philadelphia High School students simultaneously in identifying and mapping Penn academic resources and City Planning Commission resources that would be available to the new campus for high school studies of the American city and University-assisted public-work projects in West Philadelphia; to develop a plan for coordinating the flow of resources from the institutions to West Philadelphia High School; and to create curricular plans that would be used for teacher professional development in planning the new campus.

URBS-330.401 GIS Applications in Social Science
(this course was previously numbered URBS 230)
T 5-8 Gross
(graduate section URBS-530)
Fulfills Quantitative Data Analysis Requirement
This course will introduce students to the principles behind Geographic Information Science and applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in the social sciences. Examples of GIS applications in social services, public health, criminology, real estate, environmental justice, education, history, and urban studies will be used to illustrate how GIS integrates, displays, and facilitates analysis of spatial data through maps and descriptive statistics. Students will learn to create data sets, through primary and secondary data collection, map their own data, and generate and test research hypotheses. The course will consist of a weekly lecture and a weekly lab session.

URBS-400.301/302/303/304 Senior Seminar
M 5-8 Simon/Schneider/Glickman
Majors only
Senior research project. In this seminar, each student will present a paper based on research into an urban-related topic.

URBS-404.601 Philanthropy and the City
R 5:30-8:30 Goldman/Bauer
CGS course
This course will focus on how cities are shaped by the nonprofit sector and the philanthropic dollars that fuel their work. By bridging theory and practice, the class explores what dynamics are at play to deliver vital services or programs in healthcare, education, the arts, community development and other issues. The course will also focus on two important questions: (1) Whose responsibility is the public good? and (2) Given that responsibility for the public good in which individuals and groups make the decisions about how
to serve the public good, how are these decisions made, and who benefits from these decisions? Students will consider these questions in an interdisciplinary context that will bring a historical and philosophical perspective to the examination of the values and institutions that characterize the contemporary nonprofit sector.

URBS-413.601 Sprawl: American Dream or Nightmare?
W 5:30-8:30 Starr/Damsgaard
Dist. I: Society (class of 09 and prior)
CGS course
In recent years, "sprawl" has emerged as a hot issue in the media and in legislative forums from township boards to Congress. This survey course will assess the issue by asking and answering a series of questions about sprawl. Students will gain a broad overview of urban form and the forces that define it: transportation, market demand, government policy, and geography. Particular attention will be given to the impacts on open space, mobility, environmental quality, community vitality, and taxation. Solutions to the problems identified including state policies, local and regional planning (esp. transportation and open space), and physical design (new urbanism, transit-oriented development, conservation subdivision) will be considered. The Philadelphia region will be highlighted as a "case study" throughout the course, although significant attention will be given to developments elsewhere. Speakers will be invited from the following groups: smart growth advocates, the home builders, transportation advocates, community development corporations, environmental groups, and government. Field trips to experience urban form will include a visit to a new urbanist community (Eagleview, Chester County) and the Spruce Hill Street car suburb ( Philadelphia).

URBS-420.401 Perspectives on Urban Poverty
T 4:30-7:30 Wolfson
(x-list SOCI-420)
This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to various perspectives and philosophies that have dominated the discourse on urban poverty throughout history. The course is primarily concerned with the ways in which historical, cultural, political, racial, social, geographical, and economic forces have either shaped or been left out of contemporary debates on urban poverty. Of great importance, the course will evaluate competing knowledge systems and their respective implications in terms of the questions of "what can be known" about urban poverty in the contexts of policy circles, academic literature, and the broader social imaginary. We will critically analyze a wide body of literature seeking to theorize urban poverty, ranging from sociological; anthropological/ethnographic; geographical; Marxist; historical; social welfare; and cultural analyses. Primacy will be granted to critical analysis of course readings, particularly with regard to the ways in which various knowledge systems - or "regimes of truth" - create, sustain, and constrict meaning in reference to urban poverty.

URBS-440.401 Introduction to City Planning: Past, Present, Future
MW 9-10:30 Birch (must also register for recitation section, see below)
(x-list CPLN-540)
This course offers an orientation to the profession, tracing the evolution of city and regional planning from its late nineteenth century roots to its twentieth century expression. Field trips included.

Recitation:
URBS 440.402 M 5-6;
URBS 440.403 W 5-6

URBS-451.401 The Politics of Housing & Community Development
W 2-5 Kromer
(x-list GAFL-569)
Dist. I: Society (class of 09 and prior)
Download Syllabus [PDF]
This course offers an exploration of how legislative action, government policymaking, and citizen advocacy influence plans for the investment of public capital in distressed urban neighborhoods. This year, the class will evaluate the impacts of Philadelphia’s Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, implemented under former Mayor John Street, and assess the progress of policymaking and program development during the first year of Mayor Michael Nutter’s administration.

URBS-452.301 Community Economic Development
T 1:30-4:30 Lamas
Dist. I: Society (class of 09 and prior)
Community economic development concerns the revitalization of impoverished communities. As with all things economic, poor and working people may be the subjects or the objects of development. We will utilize case studies from Philadelphia and around the world in an exploration of various models of economic justice and sustainable development.  

URBS-456. 601 Economics & Urban Affairs
R 5:30-8:30 Angelides
CGS course
This course discusses contemporary urban issues from an economics perspective, with the dual goal of illuminating the economic foundations of civic affairs and enhancing a student's economic literacy through the use of everyday examples.

URBS-457.401 Globalization and the City
W 5-8 Hill
(x-list SOCI 435)
Download Syllabus [PDF]
This course aims to introduce students to basic concepts in the study of transnational urbanism, examining how the new geographies of marginality and centrality that characterize global cities cut across former north-south divides. The course begins with the assumption that transnational movements or ‘flows’ of trade, finance, migration and culture operate in and through a network of linked ‘global’ cities, and that the changes produced by these flows disconnects these cities from the nation-states in which they are embedded. The course then seeks to analyze the changes in technology, communication, and business activities since the early 1970s that have contributed to this accelerated process of circulation, while also exploring its social, cultural, and political implications for urban life. Some dimensions of global cities that are explored in particular include the notion that cities are strategic spaces for the production of the global economy; the emergence of new forms of class and spatial polarization through the linked development of high-income gentrification and low-wage/informal labor; the cultural forms of urban-image making (heritage, museums, film, entertainment) that shape the way in which “the global” is imagined and lived on a daily basis; and the growth of social movements on the part of the urban poor. Theoretical readings will be combined with case studies that compare and contrast North American and European cities such as New York, London, Tokyo with cities in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

URBS-460.401 School Reform Public Policy
T 1:30-4:30 Hershberg
(x-list AFRC-460/EDUC 545)
Download Syllabus [PDF]
This course will examine how changes in the global economy require America’s schools to educate all students to new and demanding standards, and review the arguments why the current school system, designed for a different economy and a different century, must be fundamentally reorganized if the nation is to succeed in meeting its human capital development challenge. Topics covered will include school funding and governance, the precedent breaking federal legislation, No Child Left Behind, and charter schools and the voucher movement. Students can effect real-world change through research designed to elaborate the comprehensive school reform model developed at Penn’s Operation Public Education that is now being piloted in some of the nation’s schools.

URBS-480.601 Liberation & Ownership
W 5-8 Lamas
CGS course
Who is going to own what we all have a part in creating? The history of the Americas, and of all peoples everywhere, is an evolving answer to the question of ownership. Ownership is about: the ties that bind and those that separate; the creation of community and the imposition of hierarchies; the dream of home ownership and ecological despoliation; dependency and the slave yearning to
breathe free. Of all the issues relevant to democracy, oppression, and economic injustice, ownership is arguably the most important and least understood. Utilizing a variety of disciplinary perspectives, and by focusing on particular global sites, students will assess and refine their views regarding ownership in light of their own social, political, religious, and/or ethical commitments.

URBS-516.401 Public Interest Workshop
M 2-5 Sanday
(x-list ANTH-516)
An Academically Based Community Service course
This is an interdisciplinary workshop sponsored by Peggy Reeves Sanday (Dept of Anthropology), Michael Delli Carpini (Dean of Annenberg), and Ira Harkavy(Director, Center for Community Partnerships). Open to graduate and advanced undergraduate students, the workshop is a response to Amy Gutmann's call for interdisciplinary cooperation across the University and to the Dept. of Anthropology's commitment to developing public interest research and practice as a disciplinary theme. The workshop will be run as an open interdisciplinary forum on framing a public interest social science that ties theory and action. Students are encouraged to apply the framing model to a public interest reasearch and action topic of their choice. Examples of public interest topics to be discussed in class and through outside speakers include how education and the media reify public interests, the conflation of race and racism in the public sphere, the role of diversity, community action and service learning in higher education, and the contradictory relationship.

URBS-608.401 Proseminar in Urban Studies T 6-9
T 5-8 Katz
(x-list HIST-608)
Download Syllabus [PDF]
This seminar is required for students in the Urban Studies Graduate Certificate Program. They will be given preference for enrollment, which will be limited to 15. The course is designed for Ph.D. students who intend to do urban-related research. It is not open to undergraduates. Master's Degree students will be allowed to enroll only in special circumstances and with the permission of the instructor. To earn credit for the Graduate Certificate Program, students must enroll for both fall and spring semesters. Other students may take only the fall semester. Enrollment for the spring semester alone is not permitted. In the fall, the seminar will focus on the inter-disciplinary readings concerned with the history of American cities in the twentieth-century. In the spring, students will write a major research paper and meet with scholars and practitioners who exemplify a variety of careers in urban research.

URBS-622.401 Introduction to Property Development
TR 9-10:30 Landis
(x-list CPLN 623)
This course is designed to acquaint students with the fundamental skills and techniques of real estate property development. It is designed as a first course for anyone interested in how to be a developer, and as a foundation for
further courses in urban development and real estate.

URBS-672.401 Introduction to Ethnographic & Qualitative Research
W 2-4:30 Wortham
(x-list EDUC-672)
A first course in ethnographic participant observational research, its substantive orientation, literature, and methods. Emphasis is on the interpretive study of social organization and culture in educational settings, formal and informal. Methods of data collection and analysis, critical review of examples of ethnographic research reports, and research design and proposal preparation are among the topics and activities included in this course.

URBS-714.401 Policy Analysis
M 4:30-7:30 Birch/Altman
(x-list CPLN-714)
Exploration of the intended and unintended consequences of public policy pertaining to land use, transportation, housing, education, growth management and economic development.