CoursesParticipatory Cities
URBS 3140 / SOCI 2960

Participatory Cities

What is a participatory city? What has that term meant in the past, what does it mean now, and what will it mean going forward? Against the backdrop of increasing inequality and inequity, and the rise in a search for solutions, what role can citizens play in co-creating more just cities and neighborhoods? How can citizens be engaged in the decision making processes about the places where we live, work, and play? And most importantly, how can we work to make sure that all kinds of voices are meaningfully included, and that historically muted voices are elevated to help pave a better path forward?

Designated as an Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) course.

Instructor(s)
  • Marisa Denker
Semester

Fall 2024

Register

This course will connect theory with praxis as we explore together history, challenges, methods, and approaches, and impact of community participation and stakeholder involvement in cities. Multiple opportunities will be provided to be involved in community engagement work for live projects in Philadelphia.

Instructors:

Marisa Denker and Sylvia Garcia-Garcia

I learned more about community engagement and the art of creating spaces where people of different backgrounds and ideas can come together to co-create the communities they live in. We learned different skills to help facilitate this kind of dialogue, which can often be challenging.

Sample Syllabus

An Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) Course

Related Content

Other Courses of Interest

ANTH 3100/ANTH5100

Middle Passages and Returns (NEW)

Instructor(s)

  • Deborah Thomas

Semester

Fall 2025

This course will engage students in questions of slavery, indentured labor, migration, and repair through the conceptual frameworks of middle passages and returns. We will collectively investigate the routes and roots through which and from which people have traveled back and forth between African, Asian, and American sites in order to ask complicated questions about travel, conscription, labor, spirituality, and self-narration. How do we think about the complex trajectories that brought Africans and Asians to the Americas?  How do we excavate lesser known inter- and intra-continental circulations? In what ways is return theoretically and methodologically im/possible? How has repair been envisioned?

Learn More
ECON 0460

Economics and Theories of Fairness (NEW)

Instructor(s)

  • Michael T. Kane
  • Sarah L. H. Gronningsater

Semester

Fall 2025

Free markets excel at producing wealth, but seem to do so at the cost of economic inequality. Is this inequality unjust? Is it a problem economics and public policy should solve? Liberal democracies have traditionally had the protection of private property as a core mandate. But they also have varying degrees of redistribution in order to fund social welfare systems. How can we reconcile these objectives which seem to conflict? Is the protection of individual rights more important than the promotion of the greatest good for all? To what extent can personal liberty and the common good be reconciled?

Learn More