The Urban Studies Pathway
More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities, and by 2030 this number is expected to reach 5 billion. Understanding cities — their development, structure, and metropolitan life — is an essential component of a liberal arts education focused on developing global citizenship and a compassionate and creative coexistence of nature and humanity.
The Urban Studies Pathway at Soka University is a multidisciplinary set of courses across the academic concentrations. It explores the dynamics of urbanization and city life from multiple perspectives across the humanities, social sciences, and environmental studies. Students examine how people shape, and are shaped by, the social, spatial, political, and environmental dimensions of cities.
Through courses that integrate research, fieldwork, and analysis, students gain tools to understand urban challenges such as housing, transportation, sprawl, pollution, governance, inequality, and social justice. The pathway encourages them to engage critically and creatively with the question of how cities can become more equitable, sustainable, and resilient communities.
Urban Studies Pathway courses are offered at the 200, 300 and 400 levels. Pathway courses occur within the concentrations and may be applied to both concentration and graduation requirements. Pathway courses may also be W-coded and fulfill the upper-level writing requirement.
Urban Studies Pathway Courses
EMP 230 Sustainable Cities
Almost 60% of the more than 8 billion people worldwide live in towns or cities. Urban societies need to find ways to reduce their negative environmental impacts on the Earth’s eco-systems. This course focuses on the analysis of urban development patterns in industrialized and post-industrial countries. Students will learn how to create and plan for human settlements that are less carbon-intensive, more ecologically responsible, and more socially sound. Via a variety of case studies, students will be introduced to sustainability concepts such as ecological urbanism, urban regeneration, smart growth, transit-oriented development and suburban retrofitting.
ANTH 315 Urban Anthropology
Cultural anthropology is the comparative study of society, culture, and human diversity. The discipline focuses on the various ways in which social relations, history, politics, and cultural products, like the media, shape peoples’ everyday lives. This course examines ethnographic studies that document the strategies people use to cope with the demands posed by modern urban environments. It also examines some common social problems encountered in urban contexts, such as those involving the historical origins of urban settings, social class and inequality, urban youth subcultures, migration and economic globalization, and public health.
EMP 335 Cities and the Environment in the Global South
Between 2000 and 2030, the urban populations of the developing regions in the Global South will double from 2 to 4 billion people, accounting for the vast majority of urban growth on this planet. Taking a comparative view of urbanization and development, this course focuses on a select number of mega-cities in the Global South where millions of urban dwellers lack adequate shelter and access to clean water, sanitation and other basic infrastructure. What are the causes and environmental consequences of rapid urbanization and urban expansion in cities as diverse as Rio de Janeiro, Nairobi, Lagos, Mumbai or Chongqing? What strategies, programs and policies exist that can steer future urban development in a more environmentally sustainable direction?
POLISCI 335 Urban Politics
For the first time in history, more people live in cities than in rural areas. Cities are the epicenter of many great things, such as entertainment, the arts, parks and recreation, museums, medical care, and employment. They also have more than their fair share of problems, such as crime, poverty, racism, and homelessness. This course examines theories about who governs cities and why and how cities are governed. The course focuses upon the policies that address urban problems. It pays special attention to political institutions, machine politics, informal actors who influence politics, the role of the national and state governments in city politics, and the politics of racial and ethnic minorities in cities. Power, race, and participation are three dominant themes that run throughout this class. Even though this course focuses upon American cities, the lessons learned in it allow students to understand and examine cities throughout the world.
GEOG 350 Geographic Information Systems
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a computer system for storing, managing, and displaying (mapping) the locations and attributes of spatial features. These features can come from any discipline and could represent any human or physical information. Due to its versatility, GIS is used in a wide range of applications such as resource management, city planning, transportation, business, and crime hot spot analysis. This course introduces students to this powerful software through lectures in GIScience and computer labs with ArcGIS.
Note: Students interested in using advanced spatial modelling and mapping software for urban studies-related projects and capstones are encouraged to progress to GEOG 400 Advanced Geographic Information Systems. While not always focused on urban themes, both GEOG 350 and GEOG 400 teach key data visualization and mapping techniques that are widely used in contemporary urban analytics.
ARTHIST 370 Architecture and the Urban Environment
Architecture and Urbanism will explore the history and patterns of urban forms in some major cities of the modern world, as it relates to urbanism, environment and community. The course focuses on Natural and Green Architecture as well as the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Rating System as an emerging movement and requirement in modern architecture that reconnects man to earth through the built environment, which will provide a new framework to approach buildings and structures.
ANTH 401 Poverty, Power, and Urban Life
This course engages students in a critical examination of contemporary urban experiences with a focus on peoples living in the margins of large, dense urban communities, both inside and outside of North America. The course will address questions surrounding how the articulation of global and local markets affects the expression of traditional and modern identities, how underground or informal economies shape the creation of urban street life, and how children and adults actively pursue meaningful family life in contexts of extreme poverty. Readings will focus on cities in the Pacific basin.
EMP 430 Urban Planning and the Built Environment
This course provides a critical introduction to the interdisciplinary world of urban planning. Many of the world’s most famous cities were carefully laid out in relationship to their natural surroundings. How did they plan access to public infrastructures and social institutions such water, sewer and power lines, roads, schools or hospitals? Which cities are global leaders in urban planning and design? What are the most important issues for planning practitioners right now? What do planners do when they “plan”? How do we justify planning? How do we define the public interest the profession purports to serve? What are the key conflicts and ethical dilemmas? How does the global threat of climate change change the way we plan and manage cities?
Spring 2026
GEOG 350 Introduction to Geographic Information Systems
ANTH 315 Urban Anthropology
POLISCI 335 Urban Politics
Fall 2026
EMP 335 Cities and the Environment in the Global South
GEOG 350 Introduction to Geographic Information Systems
ARTHIST 370 Architecture and the Urban Environment
Spring 2027
GEOG 350 Introduction to Geographic Information Systems
ANTH 401 Poverty, Power, Urban Life
Fall 2027
EMP 430W Urban Planning and the Built Environment
GEOG 350 Introduction to Geographic Information Systems
Spring 2028
EMP 230 Sustainable Cities
GEOG 350 Introduction to Geographic Information Systems
ANTH 315 Urban Anthropology
POLISCI 335 Urban Politics
Fall 2028
EMP 335 Cities and the Environment in the Global South
GEOG 350 Introduction to Geographic Information Systems
ARTHIST 370 Architecture and the Urban Environment
Spring 2029
GEOG 350 Introduction to Geographic Information Systems
ANTH 401 Poverty, Power, Urban Life
POLISCI 335 Urban Politics