Simon Spring
GEOGRAPHY 449: Environmental Processes and Urban Development
DR. MEG HOLDEN
Harbour Centre Office: 2128
Main Campus: RC Brown Hall 7138
Office Hours: Tuesday 3:30-5:00 at HC or by appt.
Phone: 778.782.7888
Email: mholden@sfu.ca
PREREQUISITES: Enrolment in the Post Baccalaureate Program in Sustainable Community
Development or 60 units; and one of GEOG 351, 362, 363 (requires special request), 383, 389 or SCD 301 (formerly CED 301)
COURSE FORMAT
Lecture: Friday 10:30 – 12:20 pm, Harbour Centre 1505
Discussion: Friday 12:30 – 2:20 pm, Harbour Centre 1505
TEXTS REQUIRED:
Roberts, P. Ravetz, J., George, C. (ed.) 2009. Environment and the City.
New York: Routledge.
* Additional readings, as well as lecture slides, discussion materials, and other links of interest will be made available on Web-CT (http://webct.sfu.ca).
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Although they occupy only about 2% of the world’s surface, cities are home to over 50% of the world’s population, and over 85% of the Canadian population. This fourth year seminar permits students to bring their understanding of urban geography to bear on the many complex questions driven by cities’ status as magnets for population, consumption and human development in a world of increasing natural resource constraints. We will approach the major dimensions of urban development – including planning and urban design, infrastructure, economy, culture and social relationships – through a lens of the affected environmental processes and systems. We will look back through the history of urban development since industrial times in the developed world, forward to new innovative plans and policies to better atune urban and environmental processes and structures, and to the developing world, where a different and greatly intensified set of challenges faces the environment and urban development. In discussion, we will often focus the cases we examine on Vancouver and other
Canadian cities, but we will also consider international cities on a case-by-case basis of urban environmental challenges and innovations; and we will consider Asian cities as a unique set.
Students will build upon their knowledge base of urban development and environmental processes and consequences and learn to apply this understanding to interpreting the challenges and prospects of cities in the future, bulid a repertoire of cases of particular cities leading the way in sustainability, climate and environmental innovations, and will practice and build skills in critical reasoning and argumentation, group and individual interpretation and analysis, reading, reviewing, writing and presentation.
EVALUATION
Participation and Peer Review: 25% Group Work: 15%
PROF. HOLDEN GEOG 449