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With over half 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. SFU’s new major in Urban Worlds tackles these topics and turns them into opportunities for students to gain the knowledge and skills they need to effectively shape cities and urban life for a better future.
Urban Worlds students take their first-year courses together, then choose a stream in Urban Change (through the Faculty of Environment) or Urban Studies (through the Faculty of Arts and Social Science) for years two and three. The streams allow students to focus on their areas of interest in this excitingly complex and layered area of study. All Urban Worlds students reconnect for fourth-year capstone projects, and they graduate together with a degree that will create opportunities for graduate studies as well as jobs and career pathways.
During the first year (12 credits), students build a foundation situating the city within history and culture while recognizing the dynamics of colonialism and postcolonialism and an understanding of Indigenous societies’ interactions with urban space and community.
To start an Urban Worlds major, there are 4 required foundation courses:
- URB 101: What is a city? (first offering Fall 2024),
- GEOG 161: Urban Change: An introduction to dynamic places (being offered Spring 2025),
- PLAN 100: Introduction to Planning, and
- INDG 101: Introduction to Indigenous Studies
After completing the four foundation courses, students then choose one of two streams: Urban Change or Urban Studies.
Towards the end of the program, students apply what they’ve learned to real-world, local contexts, through partnerships with local urban agencies.
Topics of Study
- Gentrification
- Housing and homelessness
- Climate change
- Migration
- Spread of infectious disease
- Age-friendly cities and communities
- Community-engaged place-making
- Transportation
- Racism
- City's role as a node of extraction in the global economy
Ways of Learning
- Real world learning: Work directly with civic government (URB 499 with the City of New Westminster; GEOG 461 with the City of Vancouver’s City Studio)
- Co-operative education: Take a co-op internship and build your resume in this field
- Field school
- Practicum opportunities
Learning outcomes
- Understand different ways to shape the environment towards healthier, inclusive and sustainable cities and communities
- Learn effective and authentic ways to work with different members of the community
- Acquire critical thinking skills and gain transferrable knowledge towards a meaningful career
- Strengthen your commitment to reconciliation, equity, diversity, inclusion, and social justice
Urban Change Stream
Faculty of Environment
Students in this stream will emerge with 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 better.
- Place-based (homeless encampments, gentrification)
- Focuses on the geography of urban change.
- Foregrounds the dynamics of urban spaces by exploring the geographies of homelessness, gentrification, housing crisis, migration, and other fundamental place-based processes.
Urban Studies Stream
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
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.
Degree: Bachelor of Arts
Major program description