Urban Studies at the University of British Columbia

For the first time in human history, a majority of people in the world live in urban areas. Over the next quarter-century, the global urban population is projected to grow from three billion to five billion – advancing at an annual rate almost twenty times faster than rural areas. For the foreseeable future, metropolitan areas will account for an increasing share of global population growth and economic activity.

Statistical statements like this often pervade popular discussion of urban issues. At times the barrage of rankings and indicators is overwhelming. Yet despite the proliferation of categories and quantities, the problems and possibilities of cities and urban life are often ignored or sidelined. As social and cultural theorist David Harvey asks, “why is it that the urban so frequently disappears from our discussions of broader political-economic processes and trends? … The urban rarely appears as a salient category in our analyses. The crucial categories seem to be those of modernization, modernity, post-modernity, capitalist, and industrial society. So what has happened to the category ‘urban’?” [1]

Urban Studies is the interdisciplinary effort to answer this question, and to disentangle the paradoxical invisibility and centrality of cities in human affairs. At the University of British Columbia, Urban Studies was launched in 1971, and is supported by faculty in Geography, Art History, Sociology, History, Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies, the School of Architecture, and the School of Community and Regional Planning. Although not a degree program, Urban Studies at UBC allows students to pursue urban-oriented electives as part of their chosen majors.

As the roster of “millionaire” cities – places with at least a million inhabitants – continues to grow, attending to the economic, cultural, and social issues of the world’s “urban future” has assumed an integral place on the policy agenda. Academics and activists alike have sought to identify and respond to specific urban social justice questions, creating a networked and international community of urbanists.

One way of mapping this community is to skim through the institutional members of the Urban Affairs Association, the international organization for urban scholars, researchers, and public service providers [2]. Members include the University of Toronto (the Center for Urban and Community Studies), the University of Glasgow (the School of Urban Studies), Central European University, El Colegio de Mexico (the Center for Demographic and Urban Development Studies), Harvard (the Graduate School of Design), Penn, UNC-Chapel Hill, Temple, Cornell, Clemson, SUNY-Buffalo, Rutgers, Minnesota, Delaware, and UCLA.

Urban Studies is a vibrant and growing area of graduate and undergraduate study at many universities. Simon Fraser University recently launched a Master of Urban Studies degree. Enrollment in Stanford University ’s Urban Studies Program doubled in only three years [3]. An Urban Studies Major at the University of California Berkeley is the first new degree program offered by the College of Environmental Design in thirty-six years [4]. At Yale, a grassroots campaign of students mobilized to demand a Urban Studies Major that would combine and strengthen the institution’s existing urban programs (an architecture major with an urban studies track, and an American Studies major with an urban studies focus) [5]. In a climate of widespread budget cuts, the University of Southern California’s College of Letters, Arts and Sciences recently embarked on a $100-million effort to hire scores of “world-class” senior faculty members – and Urban Studies was one of only three target hiring areas [6].

References

[1] David Harvey (1997). “Contested Cities: Social Process and Spatial Form.” In Nick Jewson and Susanne MacGregor, editors, Transforming Cities. London and New York : Routledge.

[2] Urban Affairs Association (2005). “Institutional Members of the Urban Affairs Association.” http://www.udel.edu/uaa/instmems.html

[3] Jessica Daniel (2003). “Stanford Urban Studies Shows Increased Enrollment.” The Stanford Daily, October 23.

[4] Mark McLaughlin (2002). “UC-Berkeley Introduces New Urban Studies Major.” The Daily Californian, August 13. Ananya Roy, Assistant Professor of Urban Studies, offers an eloquent summary of the mission of this interdisciplinary area of inquiry: “Above all, the intent of the major is to produce urban citizens willing and able to imagine an alternative world order through innovative forms of social praxis.”

[5] Michael Schamy (1999). “Creation of Urban Studies Major Still Up in Air.” Yale Daily News, November 19.

[6] Piper Fogg (2002). “ U. of Southern California Will Add 100 to its Faculty.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 4.

"In the ideal democratic city, the walls have fallen. Across the divides of difference, people connect; they agree to differ. Collective memory is organized into a then and now that celebrates the present as a collective achievement. The vision is one of tolerance and diversity, shared values and complexity -- not all for one, but the many for the all. ... Socioeconomic polarities are minimized, and injustice, oppression, and exploitation are muffled. In this imagined city, frictions are not dispelled, failures are frequent, and disagreements are impassioned. The city of our imagination is not utopia." Sophie Body-Gendrot and Robert A. Beauregard (1999). "Imagined Cities, Engaged Citizens." In Beauregard and Body-Gendrot, editors, The Urban Moment: Cosmopolitan Essays on the Late-20th Century City. Urban Affairs Annual Review 49, pp. 3-22, quote from pp. 14-15.

Seminar in Urban Studies, April 2008

Seminar in Urban Studies, April 2007

Seminar in Urban Studies, April 2006

“Seeing Like a City, Seeing Like a Neighbourhood, Seeing Like a Firm: Scales of Urban Citizenship”

Mariana Valverde, University of Toronto

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

ANSO 2107, 11:30 - 1:00 p.m.

Abstract: Bringing the literature on practices of citizenship and theoretical work in legal geography to bear on the field of urban studies, the talk argues that urban practices of citizenship tend to fall into one of three categories. The scale of "seeing like a city"; used in endeavours such as public health and public transportation used to be the default setting for city planning, but today, in much of North America, planners spend most of their time at the micro-level. The scale I call "seeing like a neighbourhood"; is also the default setting for citizen engagement and activism (with some notable exceptions). The third scale, "seeing like a firm", is often thought of as an innovation resulting from neoliberal winds of change, but as I briefly show, this scale is visible in the very origins of the municipal corporation, and has long been deployed for urban development projects. Finally, in today's urban political situation, the scale identified in the title of James Scott's influential Seeing like a state is rarely invoked. Although each urban governance activity tends to employ only one of the three scales of urban citizenship, neither politicians, citizen activists, nor city officials are limited to any one scale. The scale at which a problem is seen has very important implications for both politics and everyday life (as James Scott and others have shown), but scales are usually chosen implicitly and without discussion of the alternatives. Actual and potential debates about which scale ought to be used for what purpose are therefore important issues for empirical urban studies researchers.

All are welcome to attend.

Meet Thomas King, author of

"The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People."

First Nations Studies Program. Monday, November 19, 7pm

Chan Centre, UBC.

It's Homeless Action Week 2012, October 7-13

"Finding Home" is one of many important events.

October 10, 6-9pm, St. Andrews-Wesley United Church, 1022 Nelson Street

Bud Osborn, Poet Laureate, will be there!

To|From

BC Electric Railway: 100 Years

Exhibit at Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art

2 West Hastings Street

September 15 to November 10, 2012

The Struggle for Housing in Vancouver:

Shorts on Little Mountain

Tuesday, October 2

Norm Theatre, SUB, 6:00-9:00 pm

Women Transforming Cities

"The Affordable Housing Crisis: Designing Safe Cities for Women and Girls"

October 24 7:00-9:00 pm

Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House

Save Social Housing Coalition Meeting

Wednesday September 12

From Ivan Drury and Jean Swanson:

"Hello dear friend in the struggle for housing justice,

We're writing to invite you to join a new social housing coalition

that the Carnegie Community Action Project is initiating.

Save Social Housing Coalition BC first meeting

Wednesday September 12

7pm

Carnegie Centre Theatre

(401 Main St, first floor)

Tea and an evening snack will be provided.

We are inviting a broad cross section of organizations and people from

throughout the Lower Mainland representing communities and people

throughout BC including groups representing low-income, Indigenous,

migrant, racialized, disabled, LGBTI2Q, senior and young people as

well as labour and student unions and academics.

We hope that this coalition can be a coming together of communities

united by our common struggle for housing justice and security as a

right of all people and a social responsibility. We are calling this

meeting for a coalition that can work for two demands focusing on

making housing *the* issue of the coming 2013 BC-provincial election:

1. SOCIAL HOUSING: For a powerful provincial social housing program to

build over 2,000 units of social housing in Vancouver and an

additional 1,000 units province wide a year every year, and;

2. RENT CONTROL: For municipal and provincial rent controls that will

protect low-income affordable privately owned rental housing by

protecting the rents of housing units and not just tenancies.

[...for more details see

http://savesocialhousing.wordpress.com/

Jean Swanson and Ivan Drury

for the Carnegie Community Action Project

Contact Ivan: 604-781-7346 ivandrury@gmail.com"

SIXTH ANNUAL WOMEN’S HOUSING MARCH

Sat. Sep 15 @ 1:30 pm

Starts at Cordova and Columbia, just west of Main St.

Unceded Coast Salish Territories

* Homes for People, not Profit for Real Estate!

* No Slumlords, No Evictions and No Gentrification!

* Rent Control not Social Control!

* Homes not Jails!

* Homes not Pipelines!

* Housing, Childcare, and Healthcare for All!

FB RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/368896053180255/

Download posters: http://www.dewc.ca

Videos and photos from last year: http://is.gd/DQ5j8h

On Saturday Sep 15 at 1:30 pm, join the Downtown Eastside Women Centre

Power of Women Group in the 6th Annual March for Women’s Housing and March

Against Poverty.

This year we continue to march for housing, childcare, and healthcare for

all low-income residents in the DTES. We want no more evictions, no more

displacement, and no more gentrification in our neighourhood. We know that

the growing number of cops and condos in the DTES is part of a larger

pattern to destroy and privatize neighourboods, communities, and the land.

We want to live free: free from BC Housing controls, free from violence

against women, and free from this system that is hurting and killing us.

We invite groups to bring their banners and anything else for our festive

march. All genders are welcome and celebrated. Please bring your drums and

regalia. This march is child-friendly and there will be a rest-vehicle for

elders. Spread the word!

Email: project@dewc.ca or Phone: 778 885 0040

The DTES Power of Women Group is a group of women (we are an inclusive

group) from all walks of life who are either on social assistance, working

poor, or homeless; but we are all living in extreme poverty in and around

the DTES. Our aim is to empower ourselves through our experiences and to

raise awareness from our own perspectives about the social issues

affecting the neighbourhood. Many of us are single mothers or have had our

children apprehended due to poverty; most of us have chronic physical or

mental health issues for example HIV and Hepatitis C; many have drug or

alcohol addictions; and a majority have experienced and survived sexual

violence and mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional abuse. For

indigenous women, we are affected by a legacy of the effects of

residential schools and a history of colonization and racism.

Indonesia's Urban Future: Directing Urban Change

March 4-6, 2009

Conference Room, C.K. Choi Building

Conference Agenda

Co-Sponsored by the Centre for Southeast Asian Research, the Urban Studies Program and the Consulate General of the Republic of Indonesia at Vancouver

Ten years have passed since the fall of the New Order and a sense of hope and concern has developed in regard to how things have changed since 1998. Starting from the idea that the city is an “act of will,” this workshop aims to contribute to an understanding of the post-Suharto era in at least two ways: by focusing on the attempts of social groups to represent and transform the city, and by examining the role such attempts play in the formation of social identities. What kinds of visionary ideas, influential programs and activism have been set in motion for the city? According to what rationalities are they put into play? Who was enabled and disabled by the urban programs? This workshop brings together prominent urban scholars from Indonesia, Canada and the US in the purpose of sharing ideas and perspectives, and working toward articulating an understanding of what the future holds for the continuing urbanization of Indonesia.

The Amacon-Beasley Scholar-in-Residence

Thomas J. Campanella

Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

March 9-13, 2009

SCARP students Chris Wenman, Adam Cooper and James White and others will be organizing a one-day symposium on Friday March 13 for students, academics, practitioners and other interested community members (details forthcoming) in which Tom will be the keynote speaker. Tom will also be giving a lecture in the SCARP lecture series. Dr. Campanella is a noted historian and theorist on urbanism. His most recent books are: The Concrete Dragon: China's Urban Revolution and What it Means for the World (Princeton Architectural Press, 2008) and (co-edited with Lawrence J. Vale), The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster (Oxford University Press, 2005).

Co-Sponsored by the School of Community and Regional Planning, the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and the Urban Studies Program.

Urban Events & Announcements

urban studies @ ubc

Vancouver ↔ Toronto

Check out our parters at the Cities Centre at the University of Toronto! The Centre is "a multi-disciplinary research institute established February 2007 in response to one of the five major research priorities defined in the University's "Stepping Up" plan. The mandate of the Centre is broad: to encourage and facilitate research, both scholarly and applied, on cities and on a wide range of urban policy issues, both in Canada and abroad, and to provide a gateway for communication between the University and the broader urban community."

Liam McGuire (2012). The Ten Cities of Toronto. MA Thesis. Vancouver: Department of Geography and Urban Studies Program, University of British Columbia.