Browse through the database below to explore courses that will fulfill certain degree requirements in the Urban Studies program.
When registering for classes on the Course Timetable website, be sure to carefully read through the "Notes/Additional Fees" section of each course you select.
The Urban Studies program has an introductory course at the 1000 level and is built around “core” courses at the 2000, 3000 and 4000 levels.
Students then complete their required program credits based on their particular interests and objectives. The program is designed with three pathways that become open to students in their third and fourth years:
- Global Urbanism
- Urban Governance (Policy, Politics and Finance)
- Urban Community, Environment and Planning
While pursuing one of these three pathways is strongly recommended students can still select their courses based on their particular interests and objectives and in consultation with a program advisor.
Search our Courses
AP/SOSC 1731 9.00
Cybercities: Community And Communication In Changing Urban Areas
Technology’s impact on cities is examined, with an emphasis on institutions and landscapes. Changes of metropolitan form, issues of community formation, and emerging patterns of work, leisure and urban life are explored in the context ...
AP/SOSC 1733 6.00
World Of Cities: Journey Through Urban Space And Time
This course considers our contemporary urban and urbanizing world. For the first time in history, more than half the world's population lives in cities. How has this happened? What's going on in these cities? What ...
AP/SOSC 2710 6.00
City Lives And City Forms: An Introduction To Urban Studies
The course introduces the tradition and practice of urban study and considers ways that the city is both shaped by and shapes the culture, politics and economy of contemporary society and everyday life. Its themes ...
AP/POLS 3110 3.00
The Process Of Urban Politics
An examination of the political systems of major metropolitan areas in Canada, including the following topics: the structure and operation of municipal government; the role of cities in national and provincial governments; city elections and ...
AP/HIST 3140 3.00
The City In The Roman World
This course examines urbanism in the Roman world. It examines how cities related to the countryside and the rest of the Empire. It also explores how elite competition led to the monumentalization of public spaces ...
AP/POLS 3410 3.00
Globalization, State Theory, City-Regions
This course explores the development of global city-regions in a comparative perspective, including a critical assessment of state restructuring processes and how globalization is anchored in urban politics and the ways in which city-regions constitute ...
AP/GWST 3505 3.00
Gender And The City
Crosslisted: GL/SOSC 3791, GL/GWST 3505 This course examines the relationship between socially constructed gender relations and the changing nature and form of contemporary urban areas.
AP/HUMA 3605 3.00
Imagining The European City
This course examines significant traditions of imaging cities in European literature and film and introduces students to key source material and theories in the European tradition.
AP/SOSC 3701 3.00
Urban Analysis I
The aim of this course is to equip students with the knowledge to conduct research and develop a research proposal. The course introduces students to the practice of urban research, exploring theoretical assumptions, research ethics ...
AP/SOSC 3702 3.00
Urban Analysis II
The aim of this course is to equip students with the knowledge to conduct research. Students conduct their own original research. The course introduces students to the practice of urban research, data analysis, both quantitative ...
AP/SOSC 3711 3.00
Theory And Practice Of Urban Planning I – Theory
This course provides a general introduction to planning theory and practice. Specific emphasis will be placed on the rationale for planning, the history of planning and theoretical aspects of the planning process.
AP/SOSC 3712 3.00
Theory And Practice Of Urban Planning II – Practice
This course provides a general introduction to planning practice. Specific emphasis will be placed on technical aspects of planning including planning regulations, site analysis and problem resolution.
AP/SOSC 3714 3.00
Cities And Climate Change
Cities face many challenges, but climate change presents some of the most urgent demands on governance, policy, and planning that cities have ever experienced. Inequalities are heightened in crises and are often determinative of success ...
AP/SOSC 3715 3.00
The Urban Professional
This course focuses on professional development with emphasis on professionalism, networking, ethical awareness, work-life balance and broadening the students’ skillset to make an effective transition from academia to a career in the urban field. The ...
AP/SOSC 3717 3.00
Urban Transportation
Transportation issues are often at the forefront of urban political battles as different groups in society vie to have their mobility needs satisfied. Drawing on case studies from around the world, this course considers the ...
AP/SOSC 3718 3.00
Introduction To Urban Design
The course explores Urban Design as the intentional shaping of urban space. It questions the assumption that Urban Design is a purely aesthetic exercise and considers it instead to be a realm of city-building that ...
AP/SOSC 3719 3.00
Mapping The City
How is the city visually known? Visual representations can tell us much about urban places that traditional social science modes of analysis fail to communicate about socio-spatial relations. The aim of this course is to ...
AP/SOSC 3720 3.00
Cities And Film
This course analyzes representations of the city and urban social life in cinema. Students critically examine the ways in which filmmakers use urban landscapes to convey ideas about city life, urban histories, and urban futures.
AP/SOSC 3730 6.00
Comparative Urban Development: Postcolonial Urbanism
This course explores the social and spatial fabrics of former colonial cities such as Jakarta, Sao Paulo, and Morocco. The shaping and experience of postcolonial cities is addressed through issues such as colonialism, nationalism, migration, ...
AP/SOSC 3735 6.00
Asian Cities In Context
The course considers themes in postcolonial urbanism with reference to a number of East and Southeast Asian cities, including Jakarta, Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul, Shanghai, and Bangkok, and addresses theprimary issues confronting postcolonial cities, with ...
AP/SOSC 3745 3.00
Urban Governance: Politics And Policies
The course examines urban issues currently in play in Canadian cities. Themes may include forces shaping the postindustrial city, urban planning in the multicultural city, the redevelopment of brownfield sites, gentrification in city downtowns, environmental ...
AP/SOSC 3746 3.00
Cities As Neighbourhoods & Communities
The course considers local areas within urban regions and the people and processes that create and alter them. Different meanings of the concepts “community” and “neighborhood” are explored. Other topics addressed include the relationship between ...
AP/SOSC 3755 3.00
Hip Hop And The City
Explores urban space and urban issues through the lens of hip-hop culture. Topics include public space and the arts, race and identity, gender and sexuality, crime and policing, and globalization and the global city. Traces ...
AP/SOSC 3760 3.00
Toronto Urban Region
The autumn-term course examines the older inner zone of Toronto, focusing on processes of growth and change – in the more distant past, more recently and today – that have led to the urban communities ...
AP/SOSC 3770 3.00
Housing Policy And Income Security Policies
It has been often stated that Canadians are among the best housed people in the world. Yet, it is also said that Canada has been in a continuous housing crisis for most of the twentieth ...
AP/SOCI 3830 6.00
Sociology Of Urban Life
An examination of the process of urbanization and its implications for regional rural-urban systems, the city as an information-processing system, and the experience of living in cities. Sub-groups within the city (e.g. neighbourhoods and social ...
AP/EN 4003 6.00
Urban Experience In Victorian Britain
This course examines the new narratives of urban existence in 19th century Britain, with emphasis on class, gender, and especially that new-found entity, the crowd, and the responses - outrage, sympathy, voyeurism, revulsion - it ...
AP/SOCI 4055 6.00
Everyday Life In The Metropolis: Toronto
This ethnographic course explores various features of urban life in Toronto that characterize the metropolis as it appears to diverse categories of its users (multicultural residents, tourists, practitioners of urban occupations, politicians and planners). Students ...
AP/EN 4073 6.00
The Small Town In Film And Literature
This course examines representations of the rural community in literature and film from the golden age of classical Greek myth to the contemporary gated suburb. Particular attention is paid to the strategies of narrative and ...
AP/POLS 4110 3.00
Canadian Urban Policy
This course examines the influence of government policy on the development of cities and the characteristics of urban life. It provides a historical, institutional and theoretical framework for understanding and analyzing Canadian urban policy-making and ...
AP/SOCI 4120 6.00
Social Organization And Urban Culture
This course examines how urban residents experience and utilize urban environments so as to generate social choices. The ways in which urban planning, architecture and ownership status combine to influence the mix of public and ...
AP/EN 4165 6.00
City Texts And Textual Cities
This course focuses on the complex project of writing the city, in Anglo-American literature, from the 1840s to the late 1930s. The primary concern is prose fiction and poetry, but the works or visual artists, ...
AP/SOCI 4430 3.00
Canada And Refugees
This course offers a comprehensive sociological assessment of some current issues and research in refugee migration. Primary emphasis is on Canada’s refugee policy and responses to it. The unique experiences and adaptation problems of refugee ...
AP/ANTH 4450 3.00
The Anthropology Of The City
As a massive assemblage of humans and non-humans, the city poses an interesting set of theoretical and methodological challenges for anthropology. Through a critical reading of ethnographic case studies from Brazil, China, India, and Canada, ...
AP/HIST 4530 6.00
The Development Of Toronto
This course explores the history of Toronto from the earliest times to the present. As the current largest city in Canada, Toronto offers insights into the complicated history of urbanization in North America. Students in ...
AP/SOSC 4700 6.00
Urban Studies Seminar
SOSC 4700 is a capstone course in the Urban Studies Program, providing a framework for senior students to pursue fieldwork projects about topics of scholarly and personal interest. As well, the course may accommodate students ...
AP/SOSC 4710 6.00
Urban Field Experience
This course involves students in work with an organization engaged in some aspect of urban development or administration. Students commit one day a week (or the equivalent) to projects defined by a public or private ...
AP/SOSC 4713 6.00
Seminar In Critical Urban Studies
This course offers students an intensive blend of urban theory and research practice. Students engage with classic and current debates in Urban Studies in a seminar format, and conceptualize, research, and analyze urban sites and ...
AP/SOSC 4735 6.00
Urban Studies Theory
The Seminar in Urban Theory is another capstone option for the Urban Studies Program. This course studies the development of urban theory from the 19th and into the 21st century. In it, we examine the ...