This course examines how American cities have evolved since the United States ratified the radically new vision of race promoted by the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

course description

We will study the changing geography of race and class in American cities and their surrounding suburbs and what that evolution has meant for inequality. We will also consider how this shifting geography of race and class affects current debates in metropolitan policies like gentrification and tax policy. We will look to the future to examine what issues might come about in the coming decades and how we might avoid similar problems to those in history.

We will use the D.C.~area as a venue in which to study many of these phenomena. You will participate by delving into a metropolitan neighborhood, collecting data, stories, and experiences of people in the neighborhood. Together, as a class, we will build a repository of data from all of these different studies of different neighborhoods.

course objectives

• sociologically analyze the historical and contemporary processes that shape the current metropolitan environment, opportunities, and problems;
• explain the role of metropolitan processes on racial and class inequality in the United States;
• analyze the demographic composition, organizations, and housing conditions in a particular neighborhood and how that neighborhood fits into the larger metropolitan area; and
• apply lessons of recent changes to contemporary urban policies and problems confronting U.S. cities;