FALL 2021 COURSE HIGHLIGHTS

The following courses with recently updated course descriptions still have spaces remaining. Look them up in the Arts & Science Timetable and enrol now! 
 

URB342H1F Qualitative Research in Urban Studies

Professor: Negin Minaei

Thursday 10:00 - 12:00

This course provides students an opportunity to craft and initiate an Urban Studies capstone research project. Students will gain knowledge, experience and insight in utilizing some common qualitative research methods, field data collection and analysis in urban studies. They learn to design the required data collection tools for interviewing, focus groups, observation, documentation, and mapping behavioural patterns. To decrease the chances of being exposed to COVID19, students choose an open public urban space as their site and study people’s perceptions and attitudes through social media tools and document peoples’ behaviours to find their behavioural patterns by different observation techniques and mappings. After data collection and analysis, they present their findings with simple visualization techniques such as maps, timetable of activities and photographs. As the final product, they propose solutions to improve the quality of the urban space and people’s experience based on users’ feedback. Methods of effective presentation and seminar will be taught. Students will present their work in progress to the class and submit their presentation files as their assignments monthly.

URB234H1F Cities in Popular Culture

Professor: Ryan Fitzpatrick

Tuesday 10:00 - 12:00

Culture has a messy relationship to the ways we share spaces and live together in cities. It helps us grapple with the unwieldy complexity of the city. In this class, we will look at a series of cultural objects (films, TV, video games, photography, poetry) that respond to cities in different ways, treating them as objects of study and playgrounds for experimentation. We will look at cities, real and imagined, to consider issues and concepts like urban design, housing, gentrification, art washing, uneven development, policing, Indigenous cities, and globalization.

URB433H1F Monuments Must Fall: Re-imagining Public Space through Art and Action***

Professor: Alan Webb

Wednesday 18:00 - 20:00

Public space in North American cities is facing a reckoning brought about by the confluence of support for Black Lives Matter, Indigenous recognition, and related calls for wider representation, inclusivity and safety. Climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, rapid densification and privatization bring additional pressures to bear on our conventional urban design models and understanding of urban public space, in both interior and exterior environments. In examining contested public space through the frame of monuments, public art and public actions, how may we begin to imagine new design models for flexible and resilient spaces? In facing an unknown future, how may public art inform design practices to support an open, social and welcoming urban environment?

*** If you took INI337H1S in the 2021 Summer Session (July to August), you may not enrol in this course.***