There are several hundred thousand Brownfield sites across the country. The large number of sites, combined with how a majority of these properties are located in urban and historically underserved communities, dictate that redevelopment of these sites stands to be a common theme in urban planning for the foreseeable future. Students form a grounded understanding of the Brownfield lifecycle: how and why they were created, their potential role in community revitalization, and the general processes governing their redevelopment. Using case studies and guest speakers from the public, private and non-profit sectors, students develop and hone skills to effectively address the problems posed by these inactive sites.

Examines theories and practice of environmental justice, concerns about race, poverty, and the environment in both domestic and international contexts, exploring and critically analyzing philosophies, frameworks, and strategies underlying environmental justice movements. Examines case studies of environmental injustices, including: distribution of environmental quality and health, unequal enforcement of regulations, unequal access to resources to respond to environmental problems, and the broader political economy of decision-making around environmental issues. Explores how environmental justice movements relate to broader sustainable development goals and strategies. This class explores the foundations of the environmental justice movement, current and emerging issues, and the application of environmental justice analysis to environmental policy and planning. It examines claims made by diverse groups along with the policy and civil society responses that address perceived inequity and injustice. While focused mainly on the United States, international issues and perspectives are also considered.

Interlinked Challenges features bits of information about global challenges from the last 400,000 years. Challenges include: biodiversity, climate change, eco-migrations, economy, energy, food, health, hunger, population growth, poverty, security, sustainability, transportation, urbanization, and water.

Info bits are drawn from articles, podcasts, blogs, press releases, institutional reports, testimonies, encyclopedias, books, and documentaries. Each bit is referenced, date stamped, linked to the original article, tagged on multiple themes, and assigned a related image, which has its own description, author credit, date stamp, image permission, and back link. Connections are made to bits of info from the 2007 IPCC Report on Climate Change.

This 4 week module, supported by powerpoint slides, uses climate change to explore key environmental and geographical issues, including justice scale, international equality, global political processes, and environmental change. We begin by examining the foundation and principles of the environmental movement, distinguishing between different types of environmentalism and articulating early environmental conflicts between the North and South. We then develop ideas of environmental justice and how it applies to climate change.

Students will gather data from their own lives to use in calculating percents. They will measure parts of their bodies (head, leg, neck, etc.), complete a class survey that asks information about themselves, and use a pay stub to find percentages of deductions.

This course explores the application of environmental and economic development planning, policy and management approaches to urban neighborhood community development. Through an applied service learning approach, the course requires students to prepare a sustainable development plan for a community-based non-profit organization. Through this client-based planning project, students will have the opportunity to test how sustainable development concepts and different economic and environmental planning approaches can be applied to advance specific community goals within the constraints of specific neighborhoods and community organizations.