Throughout history cities have emerged, but recently these numbered a few thousand people each and were centers of people, of power, and of invention in a world chiefly constituted by farms and villages. That world of farms and villages is rapidly being absorbed by urban growth. By the early years of the new millennium, most of the world's population will be living in urban areas. In every city slightly different systems for meeting these challenges are being evolved. There is intervention into these local systems by private corporations and by such bodies as the World Bank.
Every big city is an arena of struggle for individual and group advantage and for societal reform.
Students interested in becoming urban planners, development professionals, community organizers, engineers, urban policy specialists, legislators or public administrators will need vision and foresight accompanied by a basic understanding of a wide variety of social, political, economic and environmental issues. To prepare to take an active part in the world of cities, one needs to understand how the various subsystems of a city work individually and in interaction with each other, and how public, private, and nonprofit intervention shape urban policy and practice. By the end of the semester, students will be attuned to discovering what makes cities work, how policy decisions are made and in whose interest, and how the various aspects of city-systems function separately and as an integrated whole. All courses will be team-taught and will include faculty from the cities visited. In general, the work week will be divided among seminars, site visits, workshops, small group and individual inquiry, debriefing sessions with the entire group of students and faculty, cultural events and time with homestay families.