Urban Studies
Designed as an interdisciplinary program, Urban Studies offers a broad introduction to the city and the urban environment.
Students combine course work and urban issues with hands-on experience in New York City. A dedicated faculty offer courses ranging from urban politics and community, architecture and the built environment, urban history, immigration and class relations, to literary representations of urban space.
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BIDs in NYC Panel Talk
Business Improvement Districts in New York City
Wednesday, October 30 — 4 PM
Fordham University | Rose Hill Campus
Join Fordham University alums Prof. Abe Unger and Rob Walsh for an evening of conversation on BIDs in New York City.
about the panelists:
- Abe Unger is Associate Professor of Government & Politics at Wagner University, author of Business Improvement Districts: Private Government and Public Consequences (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2016), and a visiting scholar at Fordham.
- Rob Walsh is the Senior Advisor for Strategic Partnerships at Manhattan College, former executive director of the 14th Street-Union Square Business Improvement District, the Commissioner of Small Business Services during the Bloomberg administration, host of "The Bottom Line For Small Business" on 1010 WINS, and teaches at Columbia University, School of Public and International Affairs.
from Abe Unger's Business Improvement Districts (2016):
Privatization has transformed cities, particularly through the role of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) in the revitalization of America’s downtowns. These public-private partnerships between property owners and municipal government have developed retail strips across the United States into lifestyle and commercial hubs. BIDs are non-profit community organizations with the public power to tax and spend on services in their districts, but they are unelected bodies often operating in the shadows of local government. They work as agents of economic development, but are they democratic? What can we learn from BIDs about the accountability of public-private partnerships, and how they impact our lives as citizens?
sponsored by: Fordham Urban Studies Program and Department of Political Science.
What Makes a Great City Tick?
Director of Urban Studies, and Professor of Political Science, Annika Hinze, is researching the best practices for making cities just, fair, and equitable for all.
“If you go into communities and interview people who live in what we call gentrifying communities, a lot of them welcome the changes in the neighborhood. Everybody wants to live in a nice neighborhood, with good infrastructure, and good schools that come with gentrification. It’s just that the residents want to stay in the neighborhood once it turns.”
Because cities are growing in importance around the globe, Hinze said she’s eager to continue partnerships with institutions in Pretoria, Berlin, and Amsterdam, and recruit more international students to study in New York. Closer to home, courses like The Urban Lab, which is being co-taught this semester by former urban studies director Rosemary Wakeman, Ph.D., professor of history, and Fordham Law’s Sheila Foster, exemplify the way the urban studies degree is truly interdisciplinary.
Read the full story at Fordham News
UrbanTOPIAS Conference | Berlin
Fordham Professors Annika Hinze, Director of Urban Studies, and Rosemary Wakeman,Coordinator of University Urban Initiatives, discussed the future of Urban Studies at the UrbanTOPIAS conference held at the Center for Metropolitan Studies, Technical University Berlin.
The 5th Annual Conference of the International Graduate Research Program / IGK Berlin-New York-Toronto: “The World in the City: Metropolitanism and Globalization from the 19th Century to the Present” included urban scholars and activists discussing the challenges of changing cities.
The 2016 conference explored the multiple forces of threats and anxieties that shape urban reality, the practices of resistance and adaptations to urban transformations, and investigated different perspectives on the urban future.
Mark Street Defends the Art of Street Photography in Filmmaker Magazine
Mark Street, writer, filmmaker, and Assistant Professor of Film in the Visual Arts Program at Fordham, defends his craft in a new article for Filmmaker Magazine: "In Defense of Street Photography in an iPhone Age."
Oddly, as filming in one medium (the cellphone) has become ubiquitous, people seem to fear the semi-professional more and more. A professional film shoot ascribes to standards — releases are signed, tacit agreements are made, those filmed understand the scope of the project. As someone who works alone (without a crew that creates a kind of picture a passerby might be able to understand) I often find myself at pains to explain myself.
Read the full article at filmmakermagazine.com
Mark Street Films – Lima Limpia (2014)
2016 Urban Studies Senior Theses
- Urban Parks by Bernadette Corbett
- A Case for Career and Technical Education by Sharnell Creary
- Improving Transit in Southeast Queens by Thomas Dorante
- Gentrification and Urban Displacement Surrounding Fordham University’s Bronx Community by Ryan Fleites
- Why Support Donald Trump by Morgan Mungerson
- Heroin Devastates Hen Hud by Mikela Ryan
- East Harlem by Madeleine Sims
- Feeding America's Growing Cities by Leigh Anne Statuto
- Teacher Voice And The Charter School Experience by Anthoula Vasiliou
- Campaigning in 140 Characters (or Less) by Joseph Vitale
- Suzhou in History by Zhiyi Zhou