Serves as an introduction to climate change and development processes in developing countries. Exposes students to key debates in the fields of climate change and international development. Offers students an opportunity to learn about the approaches to climate adaptation, the relationship between adaptation and development, and concepts of resilience and transformation. Using a comparative case study approach, explores the importance of the local context; the intersections of politics, economics, and culture; ecology and human-environment relationships; and the role (and challenges) of finance and development assistance. Climate impacts threaten to reverse many of the development gains of the last century, and the most vulnerable are likely to be the most impacted by climate change. At the same time, opportunities exist to ensure climate-compatible development pathways. Cross-listed with INTL 5100.

PPUA

Climate and Development

Offers special topics built around a series of public debates on selected issues of public policy. May be repeated without limit.

The Open Classroom: Public Debates on Public Policy

Accompanies PPUA 5225. Provides a small-group discussion format. May be repeated without limit.

Open Classroom Recitation

Examines the economic, social, and legal underpinnings of housing policy in the United States across a variety of topics, including housing finance and production, public and affordable housing, home ownership, and fair housing. Housing is both an essential human need and a critical sector of the U.S. economy. Presents the complicated and evolving roles of all of those involved in housing policy, including federal, state, and local government, and the private and profit sectors. Guest speakers provide real-world insights into current housing policy challenges.

Housing Policy

Examines the physical, technological, economic, social, cultural, and political underpinnings of transportation policy in the United States. Topics include intra- and interstate transportation, the comparative economics of different modes of transportation, the impacts of federal and state policies on transportation options, and the long-term effects of those choices on metropolitan development, housing, land use, energy, and the environment. Also involves comparisons with transportation systems in other countries.

Transportation Policy

Examines the policy impacts of legal and illegal immigration in the United States, emphasizing the ways immigration shapes urban America. Discusses trends in immigration; elements of U.S. immigration policy; impacts of immigration on labor markets, economic development, housing, education, healthcare, criminal justice, race relations, and social policy (e.g., welfare); and effects on broader mass culture. Also considers the range of policy tools available in addressing these impacts.

Immigration and Urban America

Examines the role of the participant as a fundamental aspect of most urban planning processes. Studies the range of strategies that contemporary urban planners employ to ensure buy-in from a project’s stakeholders. Utilizes historical precedents to locate gaps between the “plan then present” model used in many planning processes and "co-design" processes that seek to redefine the role of the “technical expert.” Offers students an opportunity to develop a toolkit of engagement methods from varied models of participatory planning processes. Engages in project-based work that enlists these methods. Assesses the efficacy of these methods when identifying the right stakeholders and when determining when/how to bring stakeholder participation into a planning process.

Participatory Community Planning Methods

Focuses on the climate-change-related challenges that confront rapidly urbanizing countries, particularly the low- and middle-income countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Many of the largest and most rapidly growing cities in these regions are in low-lying coastal cities in river deltas and, consequently, face significant dangers of flooding and eventual inundation. Climate change also has implications for access to freshwater and for the incidence of heat waves. The impacts of climate-change-related hazards tend to fall most heavily on the poorest, raising new issues of social inequality. This course examines concepts of urban vulnerability and resilience and climate change adaptation, as well as case studies of policy approaches for addressing the impacts of climate change on cities.

Climate Change and Global Urbanization

Examines the broad challenges that confront metropolitan areas-defined as including the center city, its immediate suburbs, and the broader periphery-including economic development, land use, transportation, housing, and the provision of basic services. Considers the array of tools available to policymakers, including planning, tax policy, pooling of services, and zoning.

Problems in Metropolitan Policymaking

Examines contemporary healthcare policies, programs, and politics. Discusses the structure of the healthcare system and its costs, efforts to develop universal health coverage, the spread of managed care, and related topics.

Health Policy and Politics

Examines public policy and administration across nations through the lens of politics, policy, and bureaucracy, and with respect to the role of government in society. Focuses on global perspectives of governance, government, and state making. Examines specific countries and policies to point out structural and operational similarities and differences. Emphasizes the implementation of public management reform in various countries, the use and application of the comparative method, factors that determine global policy outcomes, and the bureaucratic organization of the world and its role in organizing the state.

Comparative Public Policy and Administration

Focuses on the challenges facing coastal cities and the ecosystems on which they depend by exploring both threats such as climate change as well as adaptation measures that promote resilience. Aimed at students interested in the interface of science and public policy and those who wish to gain a deeper understanding of how coupled human-natural ecosystems operate.

Sustainable Urban Coastal Policy

Introduces methods and tools of ecological economics, an interdisciplinary field that draws on theories, concepts, and tools from the physical, life, and social sciences; unites the relevant aspects of different disciplines; and generates new knowledge that can serve as a basis for investment and policymaking that is responsive to biophysical constraints on economic processes. Illustrates the use of ecological economics with empirical applications. Offers students an opportunity to apply ecological economics to a variety of environmental issues.

Ecological Economics

Introduces the theory, methods, and tools of dynamic modeling for policy and investment decision making, with special focus on environmental issues. Makes use of state-of-the-art computing methods to translate theory and concepts into executable models and provides extensive hands-on modeling experience. Topics include discounting, intertemporal optimization, dynamic games, and treatment of uncertainty.

Dynamic Modeling for Environmental Decision Making

Investigates the city and its spatial, social, and economic dynamics through the lens of data and visual analytics. Utilizes large public datasets to develop knowledge about visual methods for analyzing data and communicating results. Offers students an opportunity to develop a critical understanding of data structures, collection methodologies, and their inherent biases.

Big Data for Cities

Studies basic skills in spatial analytic methods. Introduces students to some of the urban social scientific and policy questions that have been answered with these methods. Covers introductory concepts and tools in geographic information systems (GIS). Offers students an opportunity to obtain the skills to develop and write an original policy-oriented spatial research project with an urban social science focus.

Geographic Information Systems for Urban and Regional Policy

Explores energy democracy, a growing social movement that promotes social changes that are possible as society transforms to a renewable-based society. Explores tensions associated with systemic vs. incremental change, centralized vs. decentralized systems, and infrastructural lock-in vs. flexibility. As the climate crisis becomes more disruptive, strengthening community resilience is essential to reduce human suffering. The transition away from fossil fuels toward more efficient, distributed renewable-based energy systems is an essential part of climate resilience. Analyzes social structures and policy processes that reinforce and perpetuate fossil fuel reliance, as well as processes for change in energy and climate systems. Semester-long team projects offer students an opportunity to collaborate with organizations advancing energy democracy and climate resilience.

Energy Democracy and Climate Resilience: Technology, Policy, and Social Change

Studies the evolution of urban science, looking at some seminal theories that seeded the field and the subsequent work they inspired, including the methodologies developed to examine them. For over a century, social scientists and policymakers have sought to better understand cities, asking important theoretical questions, such as: What is a neighborhood? How does a city grow? What is a city in the first place? Culminates in an examination of urban science in the digital age, exploring how modern technological trends, including “big data,” are posing new questions and offering new ways to answer them.

Urban Theory and Science

Discusses key climate policy approaches, including market-based and regulatory approaches, as well as intersectional approaches that address underlying drivers of climate change.Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing society and requires policy responses across scales: locally, nationally, and globally. Introduces frameworks and tools for climate policy design, implementation, and evaluation, with an emphasis on considering how policies can promote justice. Case studies from US and international contexts will be used throughout the semester to explore policy design and implementation in practice. In addition to considering national and sub-national climate policy, covers legal, political, and economic issues in the international negotiations and addresses the history and current issues in international climate diplomacy.

Climate Policy and Justice

Explores key environmental challenges and policy solutions from an international perspective. Emphasizes the complexity of human-natural systems for policy design, provides a history of international environmental politics, and discusses contemporary policy issues. Presents key paradigms for understanding environmental challenges and the analytical tools to look critically at important debates, understand the role of different actors, identify equity and justice considerations, and assess policy options from multiple perspectives. Focuses on global environmental governance and sustainable development diplomacy, natural resource management, and climate change policy. Addresses the role of science in policymaking, tensions between environment and development, the scale and complexity of international environmental governance, and equity and justice.

International Environmental Policy

Explores the public policy dimensions of the contemporary food system. Utilizes scholarly readings and case studies to assess the role of governing institutions and political actors in shaping the food supply; the effects of energy, transportation, and urban policies on food access; the ecological dimensions of food production; impacts of international trade regimes on global food trade; and the potential impacts of climate change on food security. Compares the United States and other nations and explores alternatives to the dominant food system. Seeks to engage students in applied policy analysis of specific food system issues.

Food Systems and Public Policy

Covers special topics in public policy and urban affairs. Topics are selected by the instructor and vary from semester to semester. May be repeated up to three times for up to 12 total credits.

ST: Challenges for Local Govt

Offers independent work under the direction of members of the department on a chosen topic. Course content depends on instructor. May be repeated without limit.

Directed Study

Offers an opportunity to conduct research under faculty supervision. May be repeated without limit.

Research

Offers an integrated introduction to the intersection between environmental science and policy. Organized around the two central themes of sustainability transitions and climate resilience. Connects theoretical frameworks, including sociotechnical systems and coupled socioecological systems, to key science-policy issues related to transitioning to a more sustainable future and responding to a changing climate.

Environmental Science and Policy Seminar 1

Offers a multidisciplinary examination of the complexities of cities and urbanism in the 21st century. Focuses on U.S. cities, but in an international context. Considers forces that shaped the evolution of cities and metropolitan regions and global forces that are currently transforming cities and regions throughout the world. Explores key questions of urban well-being, rising racial and ethnic inequality, civic engagement, and sustainability. Focuses on the role of urban planning in creating conditions of racial segregation and environmental injustice in cities and its potential role in the current period in undoing this damage.

The 21st-Century City: Urban Opportunities and Challenges in a Global Context

Examines use of the Python programming language in public and nonprofit sector settings. Offers students an opportunity to write small programs and accomplish professional goals. Intended for graduate students in public policy and public administration who have little or no programming experience.

Research Toolkit for Python for Policy

Introduces students to concepts of and tools used in project management as applied to urban and regional policy issues.

Research Toolkit for Urban and Regional Policy: Project Management

Seeks to prepare students to pursue grant-based funding from a variety of funding agencies and foundations. Offers students an opportunity to develop practical skills in proposal writing and budget development. Examines all aspects of the proposal-writing process, from identifying high-potential funding opportunities to writing and submitting proposals. Assignments offer students an opportunity to apply their learning to real-world interests.

Research Toolkit for Urban and Regional Policy: Grant Writing

Guides urban informatics students through the process of developing a portfolio of professional-quality work. Requires students to submit a three-project portfolio developed from projects completed within courses taken as part of fulfilling the degree requirements. The projects must be presented in high-quality and concise visualizations and text.

Urban Informatics Portfolio

Introduces students to concepts and approaches to analyzing significant factors and relationships in government agencies and public-oriented nongovernmental organizations as they function in their environments. Examines the legal and constitutional foundations of public administration, bureaucratic structure and administrative power, managerial accountability and ethics, human resource management, economics of organization, decision making, budgeting, implementation and “street-level” bureaucrats, and more recent developments in public administration such as performance management and public management networks.

Principles of Public Administration

Introduces the fundamentals of macroeconomics and microeconomics as well as the role of key economic institutions, such as the Federal Reserve. Includes analysis of government's role in a market economy and introduces methods of economic analysis.

Economic Analysis for Policy and Planning

Introduces students to the human resources function from an individual and managerial standpoint. Studies various human resource management (HRM) activities, such as recruitment, selection, performance management, training and development, labor relations, and compensation. Applies the lens of strategic human resources management to foster a competent, motivated, and representative workforce.

Managing People in Public and Nonprofit Sectors

Surveys governmental budgeting at the federal, state, and local levels. Surveys major revenue sources and expenditure responsibilities. Discusses budgetary processes and politics, as well as resulting policies. Considers both proposed and implemented reforms. Also introduces financial management practices including cash management, fund accounting, debt financing, endowment spending and control, cost allocation procedures, and tax expenditures.

Public Budgeting and Financial Management

Provides a systematic approach to understanding the origins, formulation, implementation, and impact of government outputs. Reviews key analytical concepts and competing theoretical perspectives. Considers both the political dimensions of public policymaking and the technical aspects of program design within the natural history of the policymaking process. Draws on case materials from a spectrum of policy areas.

Techniques of Policy Analysis

Examines the problems and techniques relevant to effective management of a public agency in a complicated and often turbulent political environment. Topics include legislative relations, media relations, role of the courts, unions and advocacy groups, policy implementation and evaluation, and setting and working with high standards of integrity.

Institutional Leadership and the Public Manager

Reviews methodologies for assessing the impact of public policy. Includes experimental and quasi-experimental research design, the value and limits of case studies, political and organizational barriers to evaluation research, report writing, and procedures for instituting change.

Techniques of Program Evaluation

Analyzes ethical problems in American public administration including discussion of ethical dilemmas frequently faced by public managers.

Administrative Ethics and Public Management

Analyzes the fiscal dimensions of state and local governments in the United States. Examines the types and ranges of tax and nontax revenues available to local and state governments and factors shaping the types of revenue sources utilized. Also assesses local and state government spending trends, use of public funds for economic development and other goals, impacts of federal mandates on local and state budgets, distinctions between operating and capital budgets, and the overall legal and political factors shaping public finance.

State and Local Public Finance

Focuses on often-overlooked management challenges facing local governments: preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters, whether natural or human-caused. While disaster planning typically focuses on first responders in fire and police departments, or on federal government agencies like FEMA, much less attention is paid to those local government leaders, from town managers to elected mayors and councilors, who are responsible for how their municipalities handle disaster. Considers what public leaders need to know about building their own capabilities and draws on cases and lessons from local government to build resilience into local communities.

Building Resilience into Local Government

Offers an overview of fundamental principles and practice in the nonprofit sector as they relate to social change. Topics include systems change and stakeholder identification, design thinking and human-centered design, theory of change and logic models, program design and evaluation, strategic and business planning, organizational structure and capacity building, governance, and communications and social media.

Nonprofit Organizations and Social Change

Examines the challenges facing the nonprofit sector, particularly as it relates to civil society and public policy concerns. Emphasizes current controversies in which the nonprofit sector is involved, such as the impact of changes in government spending and tax policy, the nature and legitimacy of nonprofit advocacy, the role of faith-based organizations in providing public services, accountability and oversight of nonprofit organizations, the growth of social entrepreneurship, and the work of nonprofits in fostering social capital and supporting civic engagement.

The Nonprofit Sector in Civil Society and Public Affairs

Offers students an approved public- or nonprofit-sector internship that fulfills academic degree requirements. Students must complete minimum internship work hours as defined by academic program. Supervising faculty assign a final integrative or reflective project. May be repeated up to two times.

Internship

Offers students who wish to pursue additional directed reading and independent research related to the internship placement an approved public- or nonprofit-sector internship. Students must complete minimum internship work hours as defined by academic program. Research project is determined in consultation with faculty. Supervising faculty assign a final integrative or reflective project. May be repeated once for up to 6 total credits.

Internship with Research

Provides eligible students with the opportunity for work experience. May be repeated without limit.

Co-op Work Experience - Half-Time

INSH

Provides eligible students with an opportunity for work experience. May be repeated without limit.

Co-op Work Experience

Co-op Work Experience Abroad

Provides eligible students with an opportunity for practical experience. May be repeated without limit.

Practicum

Builds on skills covered in PPUA 5263. Offers students an opportunity to obtain greater depth in the analysis of urban spatial data focused on several urban systems (including social, built, and natural systems). Focuses on understanding the spatial relationships between various new and large urban datasets relevant to current policy challenges within cities. This is a project-based class.

Advanced Spatial Analysis of Urban Systems

Examines the characteristics of resilient cities, especially those located in coastal regions. Investigates the capacity of cities to respond to major disruptions to their social and ecological systems. Includes extensive use of case studies, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, as well as readings on cities and social systems. Offers students an opportunity to analyze an urban area and provide recommendations for improving its resilience. POLS 7346 and PPUA 7346 are cross-listed.

Resilient Cities

Introduces students to foundational debates in the study of cities, urbanization, and urban planning and policy. Presents a broad interdisciplinary understanding of cities and urbanization, addressing questions related to the spatial development of cities and regions, governance and politics, economics, and social change. Offers students an opportunity to understand the connections between urban policy research and social theory, including concepts from human geography, sociology, urban planning, economics, and political science. Students read and discuss seminal texts, including classical concepts in social theory and contemporary debates on topics such as globalization, segregation, gentrification, sustainability, inequality, and questions of race and gender in urban policy.

Seminar in Urban Theory

Offers an opportunity for student teams, in partnership with a local, state, or federal agency or nonprofit institution, to assess an urban or regional problem, produce a thorough policy analysis, and present it and recommended solutions to the agency or institution. Course readings focus on materials needed to assess the problem and provide solutions. This is a faculty-guided team project for students completing course work in urban and regional policy studies. May be repeated without limit.

Capstone in Public Policy and Urban Affairs

Offers an opportunity to conduct full-time research under faculty supervision. May be repeated without limit.

Offers dissertation supervision by individual members of the department.

Dissertation Term 1

Offers dissertation supervision by members of the department.

Dissertation Term 2

Offers continued dissertation supervision by individual members of the department.

Pub Policy and Urban Affairs