URBS/SOC 200: The City (3 units, F, summer)
This is a lower division course which provides an overview of the city. The course draws on a wide array of materials,
including social science research, novels, films, and direct observation of the city, as means of acquainting students with
the richness and diversity or urban life and the variety of perspectives from which it can be understood. Topics covered
include: the origin of cities, the experience of urbanization and ethnic pluralism, metropolitan spatial arrangements and the
interaction of people within urban space, the nature of work in cities, urban life styles, the city in novels and the arts, urban
and metropolitan governments, and current problems and issues in urban policy.
URBS 400/HIST 489: Dynamics of the American City (3 units; F/S)
This is the required introductory course for all Urban Studies majors and minors. It should be taken during the first semester
of a student's participation in the Urban Studies Program. In URBS 400 students become familiar with the historical
development and current conditions of the American city. The course introduces basic concepts and methods of the
interdisciplinary field of Urban Studies. Major topics include city planning, federal-city relations, and the dynamics of urban
policy-making. Special attention is given to social class, gender, and ethnic diversity in urban America. The economic,
cultural, and political contributions of women and nondominant/ethnic groups to the development of modern urban
American receives detailed attention throughout the course.
URBS/GEOG 432: Urban Geography (4 units, F)
This is a core course that focuses on space in the city, in which locational principles as they relate to societal constraints
are examined. The emphasis is on physical structure, the where, why, and so what of buildings, districts, and the relative
location of these components. Past patterns are examined in detail as a prelude to examining the patterns of the present city.
The order of the classical city, the medieval city, and the city of the industrial revolution is examined in relation to its
physical organization, and this spatial structure is then related to the societal and institutional forces that affect this
shaping. This is essentially a liberal arts approach to the city.
** Note: F,S, or F/S following the course title indicates the most likely course offering plan:
F = Fall; S = Spring; F/S = Fall and Spring. However this plan may be varied, especially with the kinds of budget constraints
that we are facing today: you must consult your advisor for accurate information on planned course scheduling.
URBS/GEOG 433: Urban Transportation Analysis (4 units; S)
Urban Transportation Analysis stresses the analysis of problems and the application of metropolitan planning
methodology. The transportation consumption function is described. Interrelationships among urban transportation
systems, human behavior and metropolitan landuse patterns are analyzed. The concept of a balanced transportation
system is presented. An analysis is made of the effects of the automobile and mass transit on patterns or urban activities.
Trip generation, trip distribution, modal splits and trip assignment are modeled. Alternatives are evaluated.
URBS/SW 456: Urban Community Organizing & Citizen Action (3 units, S)
This course examines the theory and practice of community organizing. In what ways can people articulate their interests
and effect social change? Topics include: turning community concerns into specific issues, how to put an organization
together, leadership development, strategy and tactics, negotiations, use of the media, and fundraising in the organizing
process. This course includes speakers presently involved with community organization efforts in San Francisco and the
Bay Area. Students are required to observe, analyze, and report on a community organization's activities.
URBS 475: Selected Issues in Urban Studies (3 units, occasional)
This is the "variable topic" course in Urban Studies, a course which allows the program to offer special courses on topics of
particular interest. Most recently it was used for two courses which have become permanent courses: Urbs 514, Urban
Growth Management, and Urbs 582, Homelessness and Public Policy.
URBS/PLSI 480: Policy Analysis (4 units, F)
This course analyses policy making processes in the United States and presents the basic concepts and techniques of
policy analysis. The course first examines the institutional and political contexts of policy analysis and policy-making. Then
the central concepts and techniques of policy analysis are presented, including problem definition and measurement, causal
analysis, policy tools and constraints, and evaluating policy alternatives and program results. A variety of substantive
policy areas are covered through case studies and readings.
URBS 485/PLSC 475: San Francisco Political Issues (4 units, F)
San Francisco Political Issues focuses on politics and public policy formation in San Francisco. The course offers students
of urban studies an opportunity to take the theories of urban politics and planning and apply them directly to the San
Francisco context. After a series of introductory lectures on the culture, economy, and political processes of San Francisco,
speakers are invited to the class to discuss issues of concern to students. Speakers are drawn from the City's elected
officials, community leadership, the bureaucracy (e.g.Planning Commission, PUC) the media and the private sector. Students
are encouraged, but not required, to do field work projects in the City.
URBS/PLSI 492: Research Methods (4 units, F/S)
This course introduces the theory and practice of urban research. It is a required core course. All Urban Studies students
are urged to take this course during their first or second semester. The course covers: sources of urban data; use of the
library in urban research; formulating research questions; research design; methods commonly used in urban research:
observation, interviews, survey research, content analysis, and use of unobtrusive measures; use of computers to store and
manipulate quantitative urban data; an introduction to data analysis; written, oral, and graphical presentation of research
findings; theoretical and practical applications of urban research. This course lays the foundation for the quantitative
research methods requirement (Urbs/PlSi 493).
URBS/PLSC 493: Data Analysis (4 units, S)
The aim of this course is good basic understanding and skill with methods of data analysis that are useful in Urban Studies
and related fields. Applications are drawn from Urban Studies, public administration, policy analysis, and related social
sciences. The emphasis is on techniques for analyzing quantitative data. We are moving toward offering this course only
once a year (each spring) as a large lecture course with smaller sections in the computer lab.
URBS/PLSI 512: Urban Politics (4 units, S)
This course provides an introduction to urban politics and policymaking. It is intended to provide students with the
knowledge and analytic tools with which to understand and operate within the political system through which so much of
the quality of urban life is determined. The historical evolution and current range of formal political institutions are
examined, with particular emphasis upon the political causes and consequences of formal institutional variations. Patterns of
participation, influence, and power and their variation by class, race, and ethnicity are discussed, with particular attention to
the recent efforts of minority groups to gain access to established urban political system. Substantive problems confronting
urban political systems and policies which have been addressed to them are analysed; and the relationships between urban,
regional, state, and federal policy systems are examined. Finally, policy recommendations and political strategies for change
are explored.
URBS/PLSI/513/GEOG 668: Politics, Law & Urban Environment (4 units, F)
This course introduces students to the American legal system and how it affects cities. The role of courts and lawyers in the
management of urban growth, resource utilization, and environmental protection. Topics include: private nuisance law,
zoning, subdivision law, condemnation and inverse condemnation, growth management, development rights transfers,
NEPA, and CEQA.
URBS 514: Urban Growth Management (4 units, irregular)
Prerequisite: Urbs/PlSi 513/Geog 668 or graduate status and consent of the instructor. An advanced course for students
with a background in planning and land use regulation. Analysis of dimensions of urban growth. Urban growth impacts.
Residential tempo controls, greenbelts and urban limit lines, control of annexation and incorporation, agricultural preserves,
traffic mitigation, development fees and exactions. Seminar format with major research paper.
URBS 515/GEOG 667: Race, Poverty, and the Urban Environment (4 units, S)
This course analyses urban environmental hazards and pollution and their differential impact on urban populations. It focuses particularly on the role of race, ethnicity, and class in decisions about the location and treatment of environmental pollutants and toxins. It also looks at the role of social movements in identifying and monitoring environmental assaults and in empowering people towards action. Public policy responses and strategies for change are considered.
URBS 530: Alternative Urban Futures (3 units; F/S)
This course analyses a variety of proposals for the future of urban life by examining the values, assumptions, and empirical evidence on which those proposals are based. The course examines current trends and projections, issues, and policy debates in a broad range of areas including politics and the economy, technology and the environment, housing, health, and the family. Controversies regarding planning and growth management in the Bay Area are used as concrete examples of alternative approaches to the future of the city. A variety of sources are used, including science fiction, planning documents, scholarly publications, policy arguments, and current media sources. Throughout the course students are encouraged to articulate their own values and consider methods and strategies for participating in the process of "creating the future."
URBS/ECON 535: Urban Economics (3 units, F/S)
Analysis of those economic forces which determine a city's income, employment, land use pattern, and industrial structure.
Particular attention to such problem areas as: central city poverty, labor market discrimination, housing, transportation,
central citysuburban relationships, and the public service sector. This is a core requirement of the Urban Studies major. It is
also especially useful to students interested in real estate, development, employment policy and local public finance.
URBS/ANTHRO 555: Urban Anthropolgy (4 units, F)
Anthropology of cities. Cultural communities within contemporary cities. Adaptation of migrants to urban culture. Urban
kinship networks and family structures in urban settings. Assimilation and acculturation. Participation by urban groups in
the formal and informal economy. Preservation of ethnic, religious, and nationality-based identities. Application of
anthropological insight to the solution of urban problems including employment, family policy, substance abuse, and
economic development.
URBS/ANTHRO 557: Urban Ethnography (4 units)
Students are trained in participant-observation fieldwork techniques and undertake research projects in inner city
communities in the Bay Area.
URBS 560: Urban Poverty and Policy (4 units, S)
Urban poverty remains one of the most intractable and tragic problems facing conteporary America. Compounding the
genuine and increasing difficulties in addressing this problem is the nature of the public debate, which has generated more
rhetorical slogans than useful insight. There is a desperate need for informed and thoughtful policy analysis which
rigorously analyses the causes and possible solutions to this problem. This course will help you develop that analysis:
examining the nature and experience of urban poverty, critically reviewing alternative theories of the causes of poverty and
their policy implications, and carelly examining the lessons to be learned from past policy efforts. Particular attention is
given to the role of education, employment, and family status; gender and race; metropolitan location; and global economic
restructuring in shaping the problem and thus the solutions. The role of politics in shaping the policy debate and its
outcomes will be analysed. The ultimate goal of the course is to help you effectively assess the present debate about
poverty policy and to develop your own recommendatios for more effective policy. Prerequisite: Eng 214 or equivalent.
URBS 565: Social Policy and the Family (4 units, F)
The family is the central institution for economic support, nurture, care and the production and socializing of children in
American society. While most people associate the family with these functions, governments see families as the most
significant vehicle for the transmission of social values, provision of dependent care and for the achievement of broad
political and social goals, ranging rrom political indcotrination to labor market behavior. States are directly affected by how
blood ties are defined, roles and responsibilities of family members are determined, issues of custody are decided, property
is inherited, and social responsibilities are distributed. This course examines the relationship between the state and the
family in America's cities. The overall objective of the course is to examine the relationship between the state and the family
in the United States, focusing on the rights that families and family members have, and don't have, in American society. The
course examines the concepts of "family" and "family policy" and then looks at specific policies which affect families. Key
questions include how the interests of the state are served by specific social policies which affect families, and whether all
families benefit equally from US family policies.
URBS/LABR/PLSI 570: Urban Health Policy (3 units; S)
The US health system spends more on health than any other country in the world, yet we rank 20th in infant mortality, and
we are the only industrialized country in the world without a universal health program. Our public hospitals are
overwhelmed by the growing number of uninsured as well as the epidemics of AIDS, homelessness, and crack-cocaine. Yet
crisis has brought opportunity: proposals for universal health programs, experiments with alternative delivery systems. This
course provides an overview of the structure and dynamics of the US health care system as a basis for understanding the
causes of the present crises and evaluating proposed solutions. The experience of other countries is examined as a source
of suggestions for change. Key issues examined include: costs and cost containment efforts (including the current shift to
managed care); access--and in particular the problems of access for low-income and third-world groups; the maintenance of
urban "safety net" institutions such as public hospitals and community clinics; and selected problems of particular
importance in urban areas such as maternal and child health; the AIDS epidemic; drugs; and homelessness.
Recommendations and strategies for improving the US health care system are developed, with particular focus on proposals
for a universal health program.
URBS/PLSI 580: Housing & Urban Development Policy (3 units, S)
The first part of the course deals with the way in which the private market in housing works. What are housing needs? Who
produces housing? What are conventional mechanisms of mortgage finance? There will be special emphasis on inner city
housing: Who owns it? How much profit and in what form is it being made? The nature of landlordtenant relationships. The
course then considers government intervention strategies intended to improve the housing situationwhat has been tried
and with what results including federal public and section 8 housing, density bonuses, code enforcement, rehabilitation
loans and grants, rent control, housing, belowmarket interest rate subsidy programs for rental housing, moderate income
homeownership programs. The final part of the course will examine community development looking at the economics,
sociology, spatial aspects, and politics of large scale renewal.
URBS/HED 582: Homelessness and Public Policy (3 units, F)
Homelessness in the US has reached epidemic proportions. A personal crisis for homeless individuals, it is also an
economic and moral crisis for the society which allows it to develop and fester. Who are the homeless, why are they
homeless, and what can be done about it? This course focuses on understanding homelessness from a public policy
framework: its incidence and prevalence, its etiology, historical and social, its consdequences, and strategies for its
prevention and amerlioration. Given the fact that San Francisco is "home" to thousands of homeless people, that this city's
homeless are among the most politicized and organized in the nation, and that the city has generated a wide range of policy
responses, much of the class will be grounded in the experience of homelessness in San Francisco.
URBS/PLSI 603/604: Public Service Internships and Seminar (4 units, F/S)
See p. 17 for course description.
URBS/GEOG 651: Urbs/Geog 651 San Francisco Bay Area Environmental Issues (4 units, F/S)
Introduction to the mission and work of environmental management organizations. Managing our air, water, soil, wildlife and
aesthetic resources. Emphasis on land use and transportation concepts. Field projects are integral to the course. Classwork,
three units; laboratory, one unit.
URBS/GEOG 652: Environmental Impact Analysis (4 units; S)
The methodology of understanding, analyzing, and evaluating environmental impacts in a systematic way. Introductory
framework for preparing, organizing, or reviewing environmental impact statements. An integrated approach to the
understanding and evaluation of cultural and physical environmental inter- relationships. Synthesis of substantive materials
on human environmental processes. Detailed review of the methodology used for evaluating impact proposals, including
the systems approach. Reconciliation of physical resource potentials with human needs, including problems of social
development impact and environmental quality protection.
URBS/GEOG 655: Environmental Design (4 units, S)
The major focus of this design course is to better understand the relationships among physicalspatial patterns and
environmental behavior (especially in an urban context), in order to create design solutions which attain planning
objectives. With this goal in mind, design philosophy and related planning assumptions will be surveyed and design
techniques for analyzing development patterns will be introduced. Students will formulate diagrammatic plans for the
geographic organization of activities. The spatial design of employment locations, residential areas, transportation
networks, open space, and a variety of services will be analyzed and evaluated in the field and class.
URBS/GEOG 658: Land Use Planning (4 units, F)
This course presents the basic institutions, practice, and methodology of land-use planning. It analyses the relationships of
planning to socioeconomic objectives within the context of market and political forces. The planning process includes
descriptions of existing conditions, identification of problems, statements of objectives, collection of information, analysis
of socioeconomic and location factors, simulation of changes, evaluation of alternative plans, implementation of
development and conservation programs, and incorporation of feedback information. The history and scope of landuse
planning, conservation, and development from local to regional levels is surveyed. The comprehensive plan, location
analysis, zoning, and negotiated development are all discussed. In a systematic way, students learn how to work in public
and private decisionmaking fields related to landuse planning conservation and development.
URBS/SW 660: Nonprofit Organizations in Urban Life (3 units, S)
A growing number of urban needs are now met by nonprofit organizations. This course analyses nonprofit organizations as
the "third way" to serve urban society in social services, the arts, housing, environmental and community advocacy. It
covers management topics such as: the board, the law, consumers and donors, government relations, income, grants,
volunteeers, decision-making, innovation and role change. It is designed for students who, through the pursuit of
professional careers and/or social and political action, expect to be substantially involved with nonprofit organizations.
URBS 680: Urban Studies Senior Seminar (4 units, S)
A research practicum for majors and minors in Urban Studies. Student consulting teams design and carry out client-oriented
research projects which pull together the methodological skills and substantive knowledge gained during prior academic
coursework. Each project is subject to instructor and group critique in draft stage and immediately upon completion. There
is also opportunity for self assessment and career planning.
The course must be taken as close to graduation as possible: since it is offered only in the spring, students planning to
graduate during the following fall must take it during the spring.
Because the Senior Seminar is essentially a culminating experience, students should have completed almost all of the core
requirements before taking the Senior Seminar; in particular, students must have completed research methods (492), data
analysis (493), the foundation course (policy analysis or land use planning), as well as at least two of the core disciplinary
courses. It is also best if students have already completed an internship before taking the Senior Seminar since internships
are an excellent source of project possibilities. Finally, because of the heavy workload in the Senior Seminar, students are
urged to consult with their advisors regarding the appropriate course load during that semester.
URBS 686: Fieldwork in Urban Analysis (1-4 units; F/S)
This is a flexible course intended for students who wish to undertake a directed fieldwork or other research project. It is
intended to meet the needs of several distinct groups of students: a) Editors and article writers for URBAN ACTION, the
Urban Studies student magazine who will be working on writing for and/or producing URBAN ACTION; b) students who
want to apply their substantive knowledge and research skills to a specific piece of urban research, and c) small groups of
students who wish to organize a one-time study group or project group. URBS 686 is for advanced upper division students
who are familiar with research methods and the subject matter they wish to study in detail.
URBS 699: Independent Study in Urban Studies (1-3 units; F/S)
Independent studies may be undertaken by students interested in reading in a particular urban area not adequately covered
in any available Urban Studies course. Students interested in an independent study must obtain the consent of and work
regularly with a specific Urban Studies instructor.
CORE COURSES IN OTHER DEPARTMENTS
SOC 480: Urban Sociology (4 units, S)
This course applies the sociological perspective to urban phenomena, looking at the process of urbanization and urbanism as a way of life. It starts with early urban forms and moves toward the city in the modern industrial nation. It covers such topics as the social structure of cities, the social psychology of urbanites, the ruraltourban shift, and the relationship between city form and social organization.
THE INTERNSHIP
URBS/PLSI 603 and 604, Public Service Internship and Seminar (4 units; F)
The internship is a core requirement of the Urban Studies major. It has two major objectives: first, to supplement the
academic curriculum by allowing students to apply and test what they have learned in the classroom against the practice of
operating organizations; second, to enhance employment prospects by allowing students to learn more about the kind of
work they want to do, by giving them experience and personal contacts in an area in which they might seek employment,
and by helping them to obtain the kinds of skills and knowledge which are needed in their intended field of employment.
Timing and placement process: The internship should be done relatively late in a student's program, after s/he has enough
coursework to have developed some useful job qualifications. The placement process should begin during the semester
prior to the one in which the student plans to do the internship in order to allow time to develop a placement which best fits
each student's individual interests. Students meet with the instructor, review placement possibilities, and together select a
list of potential placement sites to interview. Several interviews are encouraged, both to ensure the best possible choice of
placement and because the interview experience itself is a valuable part of the career-development process.
Placement information: The Urban Studies office maintains an abundance of information on possible internship placements:
requests from organizations, reports by past interns, and so on. Students should make good use of this information. In
addition there are application forms and handouts describing placement possibilities and placement procedures which
students should get.
Course requirements: 12-15 hours of fieldwork for 15 weeks (180-200 hours); a 2-hour seminar every other week; and the
submission of regular journals and brief discussion papers analysing selected aspects of the internship.
Repeating the internship: Students are encouraged to repeat the internship. It may be repeated for credit at either the same
or a different placement. The written requirements will be modified as appropriate.
Recent placements have included: city planning departments in San Francisco, San Mateo, Larkspur, Berkeley, Daly City, South San Francisco; neighborhood housing/planning organizations such as Chinatown Resource Center, Bernal Heights Community Foundation; private planning consultants such as Environmental Science Associates; transportation planning such as Metropolitan Transportation Commission; federal agencies such as the Government Accounting Office; legal internships such as SF Neighborhood Legal Assistance and the Public Defender's office; city government offices such as the SF Board of Supervisors' budget analyst, SF Department of Public Health, SF Mayor's Office of Housing, Brisbane City Manager; employment-oriented groups such as New Ways to Work, and Instituto Laboral de la Raza; nonprofit advocacy groups and public interest groups such as the ACLU; women's organizations such as the Women's Building.