Curriculum 2021 and prior

In 2008 the world’s urban population tipped the scales for the first time in human history. As cities continue to increase in size and number, we need to better understand the implications of rapid urbanization on cultural and technological development; and, conversely, how “tech culture” might impact the future of cities. This interdisciplinary course will introduce city-making as explored against the backdrop of culture and technology. It will culminate in a collaborative and creative city-making challenge: ideate solutions to a real-world problem through hands-on transference of skills and knowledge. 

How has our way of understanding and visually representing cities evolved? How do we represent spatial data and what do we use, when and how? Gain a historical understanding of how the city has been represented visually, as well as the fundamentals of representation types and information design, in the service of reading and interpreting visualizations of the city. Future creators and consumers of city visuals will be exposed to the data sources and production processes behind a wide variety of representations. Experiential exercises will allow students to comprehend and use the principles for creating clear and powerful graphic narratives of the city.

North American cities were built upon Indigenous lands, and the violent dispossession and attempted erasure of Indigenous societies land and waters. We are living with the consequences. Vancouver has made commitments to reconciliation, including acknowledging that the City was built on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh lands. How can such declarations translate into decolonizing policies and approaches? This class critically examines assumptions, narratives, and colonial relations entrenched into the city, and listens to others within the movement to decolonize urban planning. Indigenous perspectives on community, land use, governance, etc. will be foundational to the analysis of planning and practice within the Metro Vancouver context. (Second-year students may be admitted with instructor permission.)

Cities are often posited as locations of density and agglomeration effects; they exist as necessary hubs for people to come together and share in production and exchange. However, this conception of the urban lacks any normative value. It fails to ask questions such as “Who do cities benefit?”, “Why are those benefits allocated across the population in particular ways?”, and “How do citizens, institutions, and the market negotiate urban values and trajectories?” At the heart of this course is the notion of cities as crucibles of justice. City-making requires understanding how spatial and cultural contingencies produce expected and unexpected outcomes for urban citizens.

This course introduces the technological and policy challenges and opportunities in the emerging field of Smart Cities. It begins with high-level policy analysis of current challenges facing cities around the world including population growth, urbanization, social well-being, economic development, and climate change. We assesses sustainability impacts of Smart Cities including urban metrics and indicators, big-data analysis, and applications in urban modelling and simulation. We focus on how data-driven analytics and technological and social innovation can help address urban policy challenges and inform evidence-based decision-making. (Second-year students may be admitted with instructor permission.)

For many cities, the path toward greening is lower greenhouse gases, protection from ecological hazards, higher quality of life, and economic growth. Green cities value ecosystems, seek to harmonize development with nature, and adapt to and mitigate climate change. However, rollout can generate unintended consequences. This course examines green cities as simultaneously essential for addressing global environmental degradation and exacerbators of that degradation. We examine historical, conceptual, and applied aspects globally, with an emphasis on North America. We define green cities, how/why green cities take shape, why we need them, how to make one, and the outcomes. We question overly-simple descriptions of urban greening. (Second-year students may be admitted with instructor permission.)

An introduction to some concepts, challenges, and debates in community and regional planning, as a profession and as a process of social and political intervention in space. Planning is action- and problem-oriented. Professional planners use zoning by-laws, citizen engagement, and land-use policies to manage transportation, housing, real estate development, community-building, and the allocation of social services, which affect our everyday lives in communities, cities, and regions. By ordinary citizens, planning operates in complex social and political environments shaped by local, regional, national, and transnational forces. This course critically engages students with the meanings, practices, and tools that shape the field of community and regional planning.

This course focuses on the planning process, examining key issues such as how to get started, community engagement (stakeholders and public participation), situation assessments, visioning, issues identification, objective elicitation/structuring, option evaluation/prioritization, action planning, implementation and monitoring and evaluation.

This course explores the history of planning ideas and theories. What are the modern roots of (community and regional) planning, its colonial history, and how does this shape and perhaps limit contemporary practice? Why do we need planning? Why is it important to theorise about planning? This course covers the leading thinkers and schools of thought and is primarily focused on western ideas about planning.

This course is structured around the intersection of two essential themes that shape the theory and practice of planning in our world today: the shift to an increasingly urban world, and the expansion of interconnectivities between places, referred to as globalization, which has had such an important influence on the nature of urbanism around the world. 

This course will focus on the planning process, including how to get started, community engagement (stakeholders and public participation), situation assessments, visioning, issues identification, objective elicitation/structuring, option evaluation/prioritization, action planning, implementation and monitoring and evaluation.