Backward Design – Urban Sociology                    Fall 2020

1. Where do you want to go?

1. Urban Sociology Objectives
   1. Understand and distinguish between myths and realities regarding city life and other human settlements. 
   1. Understand the importance of politics and the economy in structuring cities. 
   1. Identify the impact of globalization on emergence and development of cities.
   1. Identify other forces (immigration, e.g.) impacting cities. 
   1. Identify, locate and use appropriate sources of information for academic work. 
   1. Identify and understand community activism in urban settings. 
   1. General Sociological Understandings
      1. Social Construction of Reality
      1. System model of society
      1. Power as a relational distribution of resources, including attention.
      1. Collective Action
      1. Narrative organization of our perceptions
      1. Method for construction of new knowledge
   1. Skills
      1. Improve their writing in terms of its attention to audience, argument and validity of its sources.
      1. Be able to describe and draw conclusions from graphs, and pivot tables.
      1. Be able to independently gather publicly available, outside sources of information for use in their own research.
   1. Conceptual Fluency
      1. Seeing Mental Models – understanding thinking
      1. Coordinating Classes
      1. Application of Conceptual Models – RPD, Iceberg Model, Trust Equation
   1. Participating in an academic/professional register
      1. Presentations for both an academic and lay audience – oral, textual and other media.

• How will we know when we have arrived?

1. Students will be able to write a 3 – 5 page analytic essay that uses the concepts of the course to explain a feature, domain, or circumstance in the world of their own choosing.
   1. Students will be able to produce a blog, website, PSA or other artefact that can be posted to the public domain that makes use of one or more concepts from the course in its analysis/message.
   1. Students will engage in a project that includes data collection, data organization and analysis. This may include, interviews, surveys and statistical data.

• What do we need to get us there?

Framing Question for the course: What might local and global responses to Climate Change

look like in Cities? Or, Are we all going to have to learn to live under water?

1. Models
   1. Role Power Diagram
   1. Iceberg Model of society
   1. Trust Equation
   1. Experiences of different systems  (in Hybrid format only)
      1. Cold War/Bombing Game
      1. Market system
      1. Village system
      1. Tribal, hunter-gatherer system
   1. History
      1. James Scott – Against the Grain
      1. The origin of cities and the evolution of complex human economic/social/political systems.
   1. Presentations
      1. Evolution of Slavery
      1.   
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   1. Minor Assignments – formative assessments
      1. Extended writing assignments every two weeks on Turnitin.
      1. Weekly homework assignments to Blackboard – bulk feedback to all through the Week in Review.
   1. Major Assignments
      1. Weekly Homework – 15%
      1. Midterm Exam – (long answer and essay)  15%
      1. Final Exam – (long answer and essay)    15%
      1. Final Project – essay, video, presentation – outside audience 30%
      1. Writing Portfolio – assessment of individual growth 25%

Organizing Theme/Project for the course:

UN Sustainability Goal 11: Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/cities/

The four elements of the goal above (inclusiveness, safety, resilience and sustainability) will be explored by students over the course of the semester, which will be divided into three phases.

1.      Introduction. Origin and Relationships.

2.      Data Collection and Relationships.

3.      Analysis, Communication and Relationships.

Cities are not things. They are not buildings, roads, pipes or monuments. They are cultural, political and economic relationships between groups embodied in particular places at particular times.

Phase One:   Origins, History & Current Challenges

            Through an examination of the text, Against the Grain, by James Scott (freely available to students on Perusall.com) students will develop an understanding of the emergence of cities and the dynamics that have made them the dominant for of settlement over the past 7,000 years.

            This will be followed by a focus on the growing urbanization of the planet and the growing impacts of climate change on that process.

Phase Two:   Mapping Project

            Through the use of Arc GIS, students will explore, individually and in groups, spatially-based data in the pursuit of both teacher-generated and student-generated questions around the general topic of Climate Change and the building of resilience.

Phase Three:  Culminating Project with Audience

            During the final month of the course, students will focus on Brooklyn and/or New York City and the issue of resilience. They will identify the top three expected impacts from Climate Change and using Arc GIS they will identify which parts of the city and the communities that live there will be most impacted. They will then develop/explore different potential strategies for increasing the resilience of those areas and develop an intervention to either the general public or a targeted group of decision-makers to share their ideas.