芝加哥大学

As of academic year 2017–18 the Environmental Studies major will be known as Environmental and Urban Studies. This new title reflects significant enhancements to the major that include the introduction of a new thematic track focused on human interaction with place, space, and the built environment in urban regions.

The new Urban Environment Track will complement the two existing tracks devoted to study of the interactions of humans and the environment. It is designed to give students a deeper theoretical understanding of cities and practical strength in addressing urban and environmental challenges. It brings a spatial and place-based perspective to these questions, using built form and environmental context as key, conceptual lenses to investigate the social, economic, and political dimensions of urbanism.

Within this new track, students will have the opportunity to study cities from multiple disciplinary perspectives and engage with the historical and theoretical processes of city making, covering issues such as: urban planning for sustainable cities; big data and its potential for improving urban quality of life; the environmental costs and benefits of urbanization; the growing problem of social segregation in urban neighborhoods; the resilience of urban neighborhoods; and the fiscal complexities of urban infrastructure and maintenance.

Program of Study

The program encourages interdisciplinary approaches to the complex entanglements and intersections of urbanism, environments, and humans by incorporating models and methods from the humanities and social and natural sciences. Students can choose to focus on one of following three tracks:

Environmental Economics and Policy Track: This concentration emphasizes issues such as environmental law, development, globalization, and policy studies. This track has a more applied focus and is inclined more toward present-day issues and strategies in the context of politics, law, and economics.

Socio-natural Systems and Frameworks Track: This concentration emphasizes environmental history; landscape studies; human ecology and demography; and environmental ethics, philosophy, and representation. Included in this track are courses on cultural and historical constructions of the natural and the human. This track emphasizes intellectual frameworks as well as the use of substantive information from the social sciences, sciences, and humanities.

Urban Environment Track: As described in the previous section.