Urban Worlds Major

Why Study Urban Worlds?

Are you interested in cities, in how they work, and how they change?

Consider a major in Urban Worlds, a new degree at SFU, with courses offered at all three campuses. You'll have the opportunity to look at cities from multiple perspectives. You'll explore cities as sites of culture, politics, economy, and human creativity. You'll learn how societies change cities, and how cities transform society.

Become an urban problem solver. Be trained to take part in shaping your city for the better.

Urban Worlds Major

With over half of the world’s population living in urban spaces, cities matter.  They produce, reflect, and amplify most of the dynamics, potential, and problems of global society. With planetary pressures like population growth and climate change, urban spaces need to be more resilient and sustainable for society to thrive in a turbulent world. Students in SFU’s new Bachelor of Arts (BA), Major in Urban Worlds program gain the knowledge and skills to shape cities and urban life for better.

Urban Worlds is a collaboration between the Faculty of Environment and Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. There are two streams:

Urban Change

This stream explores the geographic dimensions of urban change. Urban environments are constantly changing and their dynamism is essential to our world as we become a global urban society. In the Urban Change stream, students will acquire a deep knowledge of how cities have come to be what they are, how urban change continues to shape social change, and how to shape cities and urban life for the better in the future. While Urban Change is interdisciplinary, it strongly based in Geography, drawing from many Geography courses, and managed by Geography.  

• Focuses on the geography of urban change
• Place-based (spatial relationships that constitute cities, urban regions, and global interurban relationships)
  
• Foregrounds the dynamics of urban spaces by exploring the geographies of place, politics, gentrification, crisis, food, community, migration, and other fundamental place-based processes
• Ground understanding in constructive and critical professional and civic engagement with the world through urban practice courses

Urban Studies

This stream explores the richness and diversity of human settlement in cities, focusing on historical, cultural, economic, and political dimensions. You learn the common factors of urban life that appeal people and highlights the culture, creativity, and communication that emerge when communities form and gain the tools to interpret these complex aspects.

This stream develops students' capacity to appreciate and improve human agency in city making outcomes.

• Historical, cultural, economic, political
• Develop students’ skills in discovering the richness and diversity of human settlement in cities.
• Understand common factors that draw people to live and work in cities through the appreciation of the culture, creativity and communication that occur when people share and shape a community
• Students will be equipped to perceive and interpret the cultural, economic, historical, and political dimensions of urban society.

Watch Professor Eugene McCann introduce GEOG 161 - Urban Change: An introduction to Dynamic Places.

This course is an introductory course in the Urban Worlds major. GEOG 161 explores how cities evolve, who does and doesn't benefit from these changes while focusing on the social, environmental, and political factors that shape urban life. Thinking critically through social science perspectives, you will examine the influence of globalization, urban economies, planning, social movements and the importance in shaping urban experiences. By understanding these dynamic places, you will gain understanding on how to change cities for the better.

GEOG 161 will next be offered in Spring 2025.