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Examinations

...and projects and marks

Urban Studies 200 / Geography 250

Mid-term Examination

The mid-term examination will be held in-class on the date specified in the course outline. The exam will consist of between twenty and thirty multiple-choice questions drawn from the material we've covered up to that point in the semester. The questions will be based solely on the written lecture notes I provide to you. To prepare, read through the written notes, and review the personal notes you've taken in class.

I try to make the mid-term fair, efficient, and reasonable in its level of difficulty. This allows you to put a good mark on the scoreboard early on, and to learn about the kinds of questions I ask. But if you do well on the mid-term, don't make the mistake of thinking that you're set, and than you can just sit back and coast with no further effort. The skills tested by a multiple-choice question are rather different from those evaluated in a written project or essay question.

Written Projects

Written projects are evaluated for rigor, creativity, and originality; for more details on evaluations of research and content, organization and logic, and style and presentation, see this. You are also expected to follow the general guidelines in preparing written projects. Each of the project options includes a detailed background paper, which provides guidance and recommendations for how to approach a particular urban issue. If you can't find anything that interests you among the project options I've outlined, then you can consider striking out on your own to design your own project. For ideas, look through various parts of the textbook; glance through my research page; or read through some of my random, disorganized brainstorming ideas. I'm happy to chat about alternative project ideas if you stop by my office -- for my office hours, see the syllabus and the teaching page. But, please, no emails asking for detailed guidance or assurance that if you do a certain thing, you'll get a good grade. You can't have it both ways. If you want detailed guidelines and recommendations, then choose one of the project options for which there is a written background paper and other resources. If you want the freedom to strike out on your own, then you'll have to take responsibility for defining the question, choosing a method, and undertaking a creative and rigorous analysis.

Final Examination

The date and time for our final examination have been set by UBC's Exam Scheduling Office: Tuesday, December 18, 3:30 PM, in Room 1013 of the Earth Sciences Building.

There are approximately one bazillion rules governing exams. If you don't believe me, follow this link down the wormhole into the digital universe of you bureaucra see.

... back now? Hyperventilating? Your pulse racing? Were you as horrified as I was by the digital-torture-and-suspicion-as-accumulation-strategy warning?

Take a deep breath. Relax!

Think back to our very first days of class, back in those sunny days of September. Now remember one of the key points I said: "Cities are based on trust, and so is this class."

So, here's what you can expect.

The exam will include a few dozen multiple choice questions (I'm thinking about thirty, but it might be a few more), and a selection of several essay questions. You will be expected to answer all of the multiple-choice questions, and to write an essay in response to one of the essay questions. The multiple-choice questions focus primarily but not exclusively on material discussed in class after the mid-term examination. The essay choices are drawn from material covered through the entire course. You should prepare for the multiple-choice section of the exam by reading through the written lecture notes carefully. Prepare for the essay question by choosing one topic and studying it in depth: go beyond the written lecture notes, consulting relevant sections of the textbook and the suggested, supplemental readings. Don't try to memorize stuff for the essay question: to write a truly excellent essay, you need to analyze, synthesize, and critically evaluate the concepts, questions, and debates we've studied. For a good essay, the specific facts you remember are much less important than how you put them all together. Thimk. Work hard and prepare, but when you sit down to write, you have to trust yourself.

There will be no multiple-choice questions on material presented in guest lectures or films shown in class. To be sure, if you've taken good notes during the guest lectures, then you should study this material and consider integrating it into the essay question you choose to answer. But none of the required multiple choice questions will be based on the guest lectures.

Essay Questions

1. When and where did the first cities emerge? Why does this simple question matter? What do the disagreements on this question tell us about the ways scholars look for evidence and build knowledge?

2. In Visionary Cities, Winy Maas writes, "We have now entered an era where poverty tourism (poorism) has become a popular holiday, Favela Chic is a hot nightclub in London, and the words 'slum dog' and 'jai ho' were among the 15 finalists in contention to become the 1 millionth English word." Maas is drawing attention to the fact that urban poverty has become a fashionable topic in the wealthy countries of the Global North -- but often as a media image and social fascination, not as a real, urgent problem to be solved. How does contemporary urbanization differ between wealthy and poor countries? Will poor cities in the Global South follow a path similar to the growth of wealth seen in cities of the Global North over the past century?

3. Today, social networking technologies and practices are fast re-defining what it means to be part of "communities" in a highly-interconnected world that is, for the first time in history, majority urban. How do the "classical" theorists of urban community from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries -- Ferdinand Tönnies, Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, and Louis Wirth -- help us understand things happening today?

4. Sherry Turkle, in her article "The Flight from Conversation," suggests that screens have fundamentally altered the nature of human conversations in cities. Critically evaluate Turkle's assertion, analyzing the issues raised in Sam's lecture, "The Age of the Screen."

5. The prominent urbanist Saskia Sassen notes that "the city concentrates diversity. ... marginalized people have come into representation and are making claims on the city." What are the implications of cities concentrating diversity? What are the claims that are being made, and what are the outcomes? Analyze how cities reflect and influence social relations of difference in terms of racial and ethnic identity.

6. What is specifically urban about immigration? How do urban theories like spatial assimilation or transnational urbanism help us to understand the experiences of immigrants in cities, and the consequences of immigration for various societies?

7. What are the relations between cities and nature? How does urbanization change the way we think about sustainability, and what can be done to promote it?

8. You worked as an unpaid volunteer on the Mayoral campaign for a well-intentioned, but somewhat naive, and anti-intellectual candidate in your city (you can choose any city). But your candidate has a very strong vision and would probably create a city political machine if given the opportunity. Surprisingly, your candidate wins, and you manage to get a paid position on the transition team that will help the Mayor set a policy agenda. But since the Mayor doesn't read much, (s)he seemed to lose confidence right after the election, because one of the interns on the opposing candidate's campaign staff sent a nasty email with this famous quote from Paul Peterson, who wrote in City Limits: "It is the burden of my argument that local politics is not like national politics. On the contrary, by comparison with national politics local politics is most limited. There are crucial kinds of public policies that local governments simply cannot execute. They cannot make war or peace; they cannot issue passports or forbid outsiders from entering their territory; they cannot issue currency; and they cannot control imports or erect tariff walls. ... City politics is limited politics."

Is there any point? Write a memorandum to the Mayor, explaining what matters about city politics, to reassure your new boss and to offer advice on how to engage with community power and machine politics.

Final Grades

...will be posted as soon as possible after the completion of the final examination. The worksheet itemizing things will be here. Please note that the Calendar specifies: "Faculties, departments, and schools reserve the right to scale grades in order to maintain equity among sections and conformity to university, faculty, department or school norms. Students should therefore note that an unofficial grade given by an instructor might be changed by the faculty, department, or school. Grades are not official until they appear on a student's academic record." I hope this doesn't happen, but please note that if it does, it's completely out of my hands.

Papers that have been revised and resubmitted at the final examination will be available in my office hours in January. Recall the marking policy specified in the course syllabus: if you waited until the end of the course to submit a project, it will be assigned a grade with no penalty. But these submissions will not receive detailed comments or recommendations, and will not be returned. Recommendations and advice are reserved for those submissions received at the in-term deadlines specified in the syllabus.

General Grading Philosophy

I strive for fairness and rigour in marking, but I am also reasonably easy-going as you find your voice and learn the landscape of urban studies. Usually, a majority of students earn marks somewhere in the "good" or "excellent" ranges on the University's A and B scales. I can't always guarantee, however, that you'll get the grade you want. Think carefully before complaining about marks after the fact: my distributions are usually at the generous outer limit of the formal guidelines specified by departmental regulations. This means that every increase in the volume of emails regarding grade negotiations increases the incentive to just use the default setting -- to follow the regulation-specified distributions rigidly, with no further thoughts or worries.

In areas of settled, established knowledge, failing grades provide efficient screening mechanisms: let's face it, some of us just aren't cut out for certain lines of work, and if we can't do the engineering calculations right, the bridge will fall down and people will die. In the humanities and social sciences, however, failing grades sometimes measure aspects of the process as well as the student outcome. Even so, there's only so much I can do to help. Usually, there's one, two or three final marks assigned in the "poor" or "D" range. This usually happens in the case of students who don't submit one or both of the independent projects. Teaching, learning, and scholarship are about enlightened, informed, conversation -- which can't happen if someone is completely silent, or walks away. Also, there are usually a few students who encounter some sort of impossible circumstance at the end of the course, and skip the exam, refuse to turn in one or more of the required projects, or both. For these cases I submit "DNW" codes. If you find yourself in an impossible circumstance at the end of the semester, you should speak to someone in your Faculty Advising office; they have the authority to code in a standing deferred (SD) code on the faculty service center; I do not have that authority.