Urban Economics

Catalog description

Urban Economics is broadly defined as the economic study of urban areas. This course will teach you how to examine issues that typically occur in urban areas, such as crime, poverty, inequality, and the distribution of public goods and government resources, from an economic perspective. Since this course is a diversity course, you will be required to participate in discussions that will often test your assumptions about cultural and socioeconomic differences. This course will especially focus on diversity in urban areas by examining oppressive policies and historical factors that lead to systemic poverty, investigating inequality, and resistance of different cultural groups to certain policies and enforcement practices. Throughout this course, we will not only examine urban issues theoretically, but also use real-world data and geographic information systems software (GIS) to apply economic theory to examine these issues in real-time.