Geography and Urban Studies
Learning Objectives: Geography and Urban Studies
Geography and Urban Studies has a central purpose underlying its curriculum: To enable students to develop a body of knowledge, through a variety of learning processes, that provides substantive spatial and urban contexts for understanding society. GUS majors share common objectives with other social sciences and with Arts and Sciences departments.
General Competencies
Shared with CLA
- Develop critical and analytical skills
- Be able to gather, interpret and analyze data
- Design and carryout research projects
- Be able to work with a research team in a collaborative setting
- Be able to communicate effectively, both orally and in writing
- Utilize quantitative techniques
Shared with the Social Sciences
- Understand the inter-relationship of the individual and society
- Appreciate cultural diversity
- Understand human and societal conditions in the contexts of time and place
- Be aware of the policy implications of social science analysis
Competencies specific to GUS
Exposure to and knowledge of disparate cities, regions, countries, and environments, and through that, a comparative, critical, and spatially oriented conceptual framework.
- Use mental maps and appropriate models to organize information about and analyze spatial behavior
- Understand the physical and human dimensions of "place" in both objective and subjective terms
- Use multiple criteria to identify regions of different types
Knowledge of the history of urban development and of different developmental paths toward urbanization
- Identify the internal structure of cities
- Discuss the global context of urban settlements in both industrialized and non-industrialized contexts
- Identify new urban structures, such as megalopolis, edge cities, labor sheds, and metropolitan corridors
Knowledge of the intersection of the physical environment with human settlements, especially in urban areas
- Knowledge of the earth's basic physical systems and spatial variations across the globe
- Knowledge of the earth's basic ecosystems, their bio-diversity and productivity
- Analyze the role of human activity in affecting the physical environment, and the limits placed by the physical environment on human society
Knowledge of global and spatial contexts of social processes, including:
- The distribution and interaction of international, national and local economies
- Political divisions and control, and the processes of transnational, regional, and local cooperation and conflict
- The role of inequality, e.g., race, class, and gender in different socio-spatial contexts and communities
- The policy consequences and conditions involved with issues of space and location
- The ability to discuss trends in world population, including the economic, political and social factors underlying migration
- The concepts of cultural convergence and divergence
- The spatial and urban contexts of social problems
Development of skills specific to each student that complement their substantive knowledge base from among the following
- Interpret, evaluate and create visual representations of knowledge outcomes, using maps, graphs, tables, web-sites, etc.
- Design & conduct research projects, including applied, field based projects
- Develop critical and analytical skills critiquing and proposing social policy
- Conceptualize differences in "Place” from a multi-cultural perspective
- Develop geographic data base and computer cartography skills
- Interpret a wide range of landscapes, deconstructing natural and built environments and texts
- Develop graphic and evaluation tools related to land use planning issues
Specific methods and skills
Note that not all students will be interested in all skills and techniques.
- Observe social space: observation, description, interpretation, evaluation
- Recognize learning styles and processes through learning journals
- Carry out extra-linguistic observation
- Determine validity and reliability in research
- Know different interview techniques including directed, formal, and informal
- Design and execute surveys
- Collect life histories
- Learn how to listen
- Be a participant observer
- Create and interpret maps
- Map urban neighborhoods (transects, economic activity, social networks, etc.)
- Collect and analyze visual data
- Write reports
- Present reports and other material
- Use, create and evaluate basic tables and statistical analysis
- Use census data
- Perform electronic data base research
- Design research questions
- Visually present data
- Do web-based data systems management