URBAN UNDERSTANDING

A NEW MINOR IN URBAN STUDIES GIVES STUDENTS
THE OPPORTUNITY TO STUDY ALL THINGS METROPOLITAN.

With its sluggish rush-hour traffic, the I-95 drive past downtown Miami offers more than just practice in patience. It’s an opportunity to ponder the dozens of skeletal skyscrapers and giant cranes that populate the city’s center. Motorists may even imagine the future when the towers are built, the businesses and homeowners are moved in, and the car-clogged highway is a catastrophic mess.

Soaring rates of development and population growth are already causing problems in the Sunshine State’s south. But with a new 15-credit minor in urban studies, the College of Arts and Sciences is offering students the opportunity to make a difference. The study of all things metropolitan, such as economics, city planning, architecture, politics, social relationships, and ecology, urban studies has grown in popularity as cities around the world have become increasingly crowded.

“We are entering an age when more than half of the world’s population lives in cities,” said Dean of the School of Architecture Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, who expects many of her own students to benefit from the minor. “Urban studies is an important area of study for the University as a whole because so many issues are tied to the urban environment.” Jan Nijman, professor of geography and regional studies and director of the Urban Studies Program, thinks that students pursuing the new minor are fortunate to be living and studying in Miami. “We should seize the opportunity for learning that the city offers,” he said. “We want to combine teaching in the classroom with what happens here, so students can see it with their own eyes.”

Seeing the city with all its successes and failures is precisely how students who sign up for the minor will begin their study. The first of the program’s two required courses is called“Metropolitan Miami,” in which students learn about Miami’s history, geography, built environment, ecology, governance, economic base, diverse populations, and its role in the hemisphere and beyond.

To give students a more global perspective, the program requires a course called “Cities in Time and Space.” The class focuses on cities that vary widely in their histories and geographies, such as the city-states of ancient Greece, Mayan cities, Europe’s early modern commercial trade centers, all-black towns of the western United States, and U.S. Latino metropolises.

“The class provides an opportunity for students to look at this thing called the city in very different ways,” said Nijman. “It also gives us an opportunity to bridge between arts and sciences and architecture, so sociology, geography, and history students get to sit down with architecture students who have a different way of looking at the city and urban environments.”

After taking the core classes, students select three additional courses to fulfill their requirement. These include, among others, Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States, Urbanization in the Developing World, and a seminar on Town Design.