Urban Inequality

Catalog description

This is an interdisciplinary seminar on inequality in metropolitan American that draws on scholarship from sociology, history, political science, and public policy. The first part of the course is dedicated to understanding the political, historical, and social determinants of inequality in America's cities and their surrounding suburbs. Politically and socially, cities face unique challenges. Municipalities lack much formal authority to resolve issues that arise within their borders and their populations are often highly heterogeneous. In the second part of the course, we investigate several contemporary urban issues, such as schooling, gentrification, immigration, climate change, and downtown development.