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Teaching Urban Planning And Public Policy: Developing A "City As Classroom" Model At Two New England Colleges, Steven Corey, Mark Motte

Steven H. Corey

Emerging trends in teaching urban geography, city planning, and public policy studies resonate with calls from think tanks, research associations, and most recently the Carnegie Foundation, for undergraduate education to be "reinvented" as interdisciplinary, inquiry-based, and experiential. This paper outlines a model that offers some success with inquiry-based learning strategies in the geography program at Rhode Island College and the urban studies program at Worcester State College. In grappling with the knotty problems of contemporary urban development/redevelopment policies in Providence and Worcester (downtown revitalization, infrastructure improvements, retail/commercial strategies, industrial restructuring, shifting labor markets, neighborhood planning, housing development, etc.), our students …