Urban Studies

Cities have been centers of commercial, cultural and intellectual life for thousands of years. In cities all the tensions, possibilities and problems of human existence coexist: culture and crime, poverty and wealth, crowding and isolation, vitality and decay. Urban studies explores the dynamic relationships that define the ways in which people live and work with one another in cities.

The urban studies major allows students to gain a perspective on the different urban phenomena that crucially affect the quality of life of most Americans, and to relate their liberal education to specific and real human concerns.