🎓Open to students who hold a high school diploma or high school equivalency.
The Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies and the Built Environment is a four-year liberal arts undergraduate major for students interested in studying cities and urban life.
Students use New York City as their living laboratory, preparing to become thoughtful stewards of urban change. Five core courses explore environmental impact, social justice, and the roles of design, planning, real estate, transportation, and governance in shaping urban growth. Students also complete a two-semester capstone project and benefit from the expertise, resources, and faculty of the Spitzer School.
Graduates are highly sought after by employers including urban planning consultancies, city agencies, real estate development firms, nonprofits, and transportation logistics companies. Many hold business development or marketing positions within the architecture, engineering, and construction sector. The program also provides a strong foundation for graduate study in fields including urban planning, real estate development, urban studies, sociology, and geography.
📅 4 years, full-time, 120 credits, in-person
📝 How to apply
Curriculum
Detailed information on course structure, schedule, and requirements:
Introduction to Urban Studies
This class offers an introduction to the multidisciplinary field of urban studies. First, we define what the city is and examine how it has been studied by various disciplines. Second, we explore the material and spatial forms of cities, considering how they are organized, built, and connected to natural systems. Third, we consider the social experience of urban inhabitants, including the opportunities, challenges, and inequalities created by urban cohabitation.
Please note: Students may take IAS 22200, Introduction to Urban Studies and Planning (evening course, 4 credits at the Division for Interdisciplinary Studies, CWE) to satisfy this core requirement.
SOC 10500: Individual, Group, and Society: An Introduction to Sociology
The language of sociology, the sociological perspective, and basic areas of sociological inquiry. Topics include: culture, socialization, self and society, social stratification and social class, the family, religion, policy, community organization, collective behavior, mass culture, social order, and social change.
Core: The City in History
This course offers an introduction to the history of cities through time and across cultures—from the emergence of proto-urban settlements in Anatolia some 9,000 years ago to the rise of contemporary megacities such as Lagos or Shenzhen. Throughout the semester, we will consider urban forms in their economic, social, political, and cultural contexts, exploring, among other themes, the notions of citizenship and urbanity, the relationship between urban form and urban life, the process of urbanization, and the search for the ideal city.
Core: Techniques of Urban Communication
This course helps students to develop fluency and visual literacy in multimedia communication about the built environment and to master qualitative tools of place-based analysis and representation, including interviews, video editing, photography, digital cartography, and writing for non-expert and non-academic audiences. Informed by a deep dive into the history of mutual influence between documentary media and urban discourse over the past century, this course will expose students to the history and the vanguard of storytelling techniques and philosophies. This legacy is of growing importance as the worlds of media production and design increasingly converge. From new job opportunities for design and planning professionals to new expectations for business development, community engagement, and strategic communication, today’s urbanists must be critical storytellers.
Working with data and material from coursework or original research, each student will create a multimedia documentary project about a neighborhood in New York City that includes video, photography, descriptive writing, maps, and infographics.
Prerequisites: Introduction to Urban Studies and The City in History
Core: Social Justice and the Built Environment
This seminar surveys a range of distinct yet overlapping social justice movements and investigates their relationship to urban development and the physical city. By applying global debates to local campaigns for equity in the built environment, this seminar will view New York City as a laboratory of experiments that link activism and design.
Students will be expected to develop their own positions on the context, tactics, and outcomes of various social justice movements and campaigns — and to articulate the role of the built environment professions (architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design and planning) in resisting or supporting the quest for justice and equity in the contemporary city.
Prerequisites: Introduction to Urban Studies and The City in History.
Capstone Project I
This course provides the theoretical and methodological foundation necessary for accomplishing advanced independent study research in urban studies. Each student will work with a faculty advisor and tailor their project to their interests within urban studies. Over the semester, students will formulate a detailed, cohesive, and well-researched proposal. Students will identify and refine a topic of interest, solidify a body of critically pertinent research methods and referents, and develop an intellectually engaging independent design research project. Students must meet with the Capstone advisor before the beginning of the semester and submit a 3-page written research proposal; proposals must be approved before the start of class.
Prerequisites: Social Justice and the Built Environment, and Techniques of Urban Communication
Capstone Project 2
In this course, students will synthesize their capstone project. To further tailor their project to their interests within urban studies, each student, or team of students, will continue working with their paired faculty advisor. Students will either participate in a practical, in-the-field collaborative project or will pursue individual research. A sustained individual project or thesis will be produced, allowing students to synthesize their education in urban studies. The project should be presented to, and open to the interaction of, a wide public audience.
Prerequisites: Capstone Project I
Elective 1
Elective 2
Elective #2 to fulfill requirement for quantitative analysis (3pts)
Elective 3
Elective #3 to fulfill requirement for social theory / research methods (3 pts)
Elective 4
Elective 5
General Education/Pathways Core:
Fixed Core/12 Credits: English Comp 1 & 2, Math & Quantitative Reasoning, Life & Physical Sciences
Flexible Core/18 Credits: World Cultures & Global Issues- Literature, World Cultures & Global Issues- History, Creative Expression, Individual & Society, Scientific World
Additional CCNY requirements: 12 credits in CLAS College Option
Curriculum
Urban Studies Major: Course structure and student schedule:
The major will require 36 credits including:
- 15 credits in the core curriculum (5 courses)
- 15 credits of elective seminars (number of courses depends on the student’s program). **At least one of the elective seminars must fulfill the requirement for a quantitative analysis class (which can be found in various statistics classes in the departments of Economics, Sociology, or Psychology) and one in social theory / qualitative research (which can be found in Sociology, Anthropology, and Political Science.) Please see advisor for a list of current CCNY elective offerings.
- 6 credits of Capstone project (2 courses)
Articulation Agreements
The City College of New York has active articulation agreements with the Borough of Manhattan Community College (CUNY) and Guttman Community College (CUNY). These articulation agreements provide written contracts or partnerships with The City College of New York that outline agreed upon coursework that will transfer over to the City College of New York. When you complete your coursework and meet the requirements specified by the City College of New York upon applying, you will be admitted and those completed courses will be applied towards your baccalaureate degree in Urban Studies and the Built Environment. More information about the requirements is provided in the links below:
