Global Urban Studies Specialization
The global urban studies track builds policy-oriented, interdisciplinary, and global knowledge about cities through innovative curriculum and research grounded in the social sciences. It features collaborative scholarship with community partners in the Greater Newark metro area and in cities around the world. Trained as researchers who bridge theory, social science research, and practice, our graduates are poised to make impacts that will help to create thriving and inclusive cities in the United States and around the world. Our campus hosts a wealth of faculty and students diversely engaged in global urban studies. Our program leverages this energy and expertise across Rutgers' colleges and schools, departments, programs, and research centers to produce a cutting-edge program to address critical urban issues.
Global urban studies core faculty members specialize in the following research and policy areas: urban education, comparative and international education, international migration and immigration, urban violence, political participation, the arts and urban development, race and ethnicity, public health and housing, and sustainable environment. Faculty department and program affiliations include sociology, political science, anthropology, economics, business, law, and criminal justice. We have research partnerships with universities and scholars in a number of countries in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and a special emerging focus on Africa.
The global urban studies track at Rutgers joins one other track in the joint Ph.D. program in urban systems that address particular challenges facing cities: urban environment at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Global urban studies is a successor to the urban education policy track (2004-2015), directed by Professor Alan Sadovnik.
(formerly Urban Education)
Urban Environment Specialization
In the urban environment specialization metropolitan areas are viewed as complex built systems composed of buildings, neighborhoods, open spaces, transportation, and other infrastructures. Courses and dissertation research focus on these physically constructed places and networks as well as the policies and programs that serve to plan, fund, and manage them. This specialization shares with urban educational policy and urban health a social science approach to research. Within the urban environment specialization, however, students may choose instead to pursue a subspecialization in urban and architectural history. Many students enter the specialization with a background in architecture or planning but that is not required. Graduates are prepared to pursue independent or collaborative research, teach in universities or colleges, or work in planning or development departments.
Programs, Faculty, and Courses 
