UTSOA

Course description

Environmental planning is influenced by contested meanings and conceptions of urban space, environments, and Nature, as well as shifting relations of power between different social groups. In this course, we will focus on the politics of environmental planning, broadly defined, and examine how political-economic and social structures and processes influence environmental policy-making and planning practices, We will review different modes of learning about and representing the urban environment-Western science, environmental monitoring, environmental modeling, local and experiential knowledge, activist science-and explore how such different strategies influence the work of environmental planners. We will also review different urban environmental concerns, including air quality, water resource management, and urban forestry, and examine how these are linked with both the physical and social structures of urban environments. We will review the historical development of the legal and policy framework for environmental planning in the United States, and spend part of the course reviewing and conducting environmental analyses using GIS and other modeling software. We will approach our analysis from a critical perspective, always assessing the political-economic context of our planning sites and examine how social processes influence decision-making. The intent of the course is to prepare planning, sustainable design, geography, and public policy students to understand the social and ideological context of environmental planning, but also learn the tools necessary to conduct environmental analysis, interact with environmental scientists, and produce professional reports.