Environmental Implications of Rural-Urban Transitions

Catalog description

Course examines relationships between urban and rural environments to build an integrated understanding of contemporary landscape and livelihood transformations. When urban and rural spaces are contiguous, the loss of farmland and forests due to urban sprawl is more visible, and rural concerns emerge in urban spaces as community agriculture and local food movements. In contrast, when urban and rural spaces are distant, the dependence of urbanization on rural resource extraction often remains hidden from everyday experiences. By focusing on rural-urban transitions, this course seeks to highlight the uneven environmental consequences of contemporary development, and contribute to strategies for achieving equity across the urban-rural divide.