Urban Studies

3 semester credits. This course explores how green spaces can be understood as arenas where climate, cultural heritage, and personal well-being converge. Students will delve into sustainable principles for creating healthy green spaces in cities. They will discover the significance of gardens in fostering beneficial psychophysical practices, and the advantageous implications of green infrastructures for the community. The course delves into the science that underpins the restorative power of nature, exploring how gardens can alleviate stress, promote physical activity, and enhance overall well-being. Through lectures, interactive workshops, and visits to local urban gardens, students will gain a deeper understanding of gardens as places of culture, intended as a polyhedral term that embraces both mind and body, from the individual to the community levels. This course includes an Experiential Learning Project with CEMI.

4 semester credits. This course explores how green spaces can be seen as arenas where climate, cultural heritage, and personal well-being converge. Students will delve into the sustainable principles for creating healthy green spaces in cities. They will discover the significance of gardens in fostering beneficial psychophysical practices, and the advantageous implications of green infrastructures for the community. The course explore the science that underpins the restorative power of nature, exploring how gardens can alleviate stress, promote physical activity, and enhance overall well-being. Through lectures, interactive workshops, and visits to local urban gardens, students will gain a deeper understanding of gardens as places of culture, intended as a polyhedral term that embraces both mind and body, on both individual and community levels. This course includes an Experiential Learning Project with CEMI. This course includes service learning hours within the local community.

3 semester credits. This course delves deeper into the phenomenon of gentrification, exploring its history, dynamics, causes, and effect. The complex notion of gentrification will be defined with relations to the politics of housing, social justice, and urban developments. The notion will be framed with references to different periods and geographical contexts. Gentrification will be assessed through a variety of social, political, and economic factors such as race, ethnicity, poverty, aesthetics, rurality, organized crime, commodification, Disneyfication, and museumification. In the second half of the course, emphasis will be placed on the gentrifying spaces in Italy, and Florence in particular, and students will be guided to conduct field research to further examine the impacts that gentrification has on urban and social inequalities.

Cross-listed from Photography

Cross-listed from Fashion Communication and Publishing

Cross-listed from Food and Culture

Cross-listed from Italian Literature

Cross-listed from Art History

Cross-listed from Art History

Cross-listed from Art History

Cross-listed from History

Cross-listed from Philosophy