Sustainability

An introduction to the essential elements about the growth and development of cities. Review the challenges of urbanization and urban sustainability in the contemporary period. This course is required for all students who select the track in sustainability.

Analysis and design of landscape spaces. Topics include ecological principles, landforms and plant materials.

Basic design principles for the rehabilitation of historic buildings and districts. Evaluating character-defining details; significance analysis; context of setting issues within historic districts; applying the Secretary of the Interior's standards for rehabilitation.

A discussion of tropical architecture and the theme of tropicalism. Research, analysis and documentation in drawing of selected case studies.

Introduction to the lexicon of urbanism; analytical presentations of the concepts of: region, town, neigborhood, corridor, district, and building type; interdisciplinary presentations, review, and criticism of current town and urban design projects.

Group or individual investigations of significant architectural issues, offered by special arrangement only.

Historical overview of the origin and development of cities around the world. Emphasis on intentional form of settlements (the ideal) as well as response to economic and political imperatives such as trade and defense (the real).

Explores opposing views of population growth and environmental sustainability through the media and cinema: contrasts "doomsters" who believe population growth and resource consumption threaten human survival, and pro-growth "boomsters" who believe human ingenuity and technology will continue to allow humankind to prosper.

An introduction to spatial analysis, which consists of techniques for analyzing patterns of and interrelationships between spatial data. Topics include vector polygon editing and topology, integration of raster and vector data, surface analysis and 30 analysis, suitability mapping, spatial modeling and multi-criteria evaluations.

Theory and techniques of environmental remote sensing and imagery interpretation for earth resources monitoring and management.

Social and environmental science applications of spatial statistical analysis illustrated with data and numerical (simulation experiments) examples employing interactive software. This course's focus is on spatial auto correlation.

The intricacies of global geographies of major food systems, how these systems have come to be and where major food types produced, why and where the major demand centers are. It also examines what the future implication for food is through exploration and evaluation of a range of visions for a safe, sustainable food system.

The mechanisms by which climate change adversely affects human health and the policy options for mitigating our exposure.

The concepts of environmental sustainability and energy security will be explored. The importance of energy and the mitigation of climate change in formulation of country strategies, advancement of national interests and shaping of the international system will be stressed.

This course examines the management of disasters from natural causes. It is focused primarily on the theory and practice of response. At the center of this investigation is a difficult question: how to help? The answers are not obvious. Through the vocabularies of practicioners and frameworks offered by academic literature, we will explore the ways in which responders respond, the lessons learned and the best practices that have emerged in the field of disaster response and humanitarian intervention.