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- Does the built environment influence community and other forms of social organization?
- How do public interactions, human agency, community life, and other local phenomena affect the macro-phenomena of cities and urban hierarchies?
- Do the city, its forms, and its processes comprise entities that are sui generis (i.e., in a class by themselves), or can they be attributed to other social properties. If the latter is true, then why focus on the urban at all?
- How can theory, an explanatory account conventionally based on large numbers of observations, be used to understand cities that are arguably too diverse and few to make scientific generalizations from?
To grasp these issues, students will read classic works in urban studies, conduct qualitative and quantitative research on cities, and make their own theoretical propositions and syntheses in discussions, group assignments, and exams.