Projects

Ever wondered why some places grow while others shrink? How different communities experience urbanization, and who benefits in this uneven, global process? How cities depend on natural resources even as they teem with biodiversity? Why it is still not common sense that everyone has a right to good housing? That neighborhoods do not need to be “revitalized” but developed in ways that are equitable and just?

These are some of the questions addressed by our students in their semester and thesis projects. Here is a small sample.

In this video, the 2025 graduates introduce their thesis work and explain what urban studies means to them.

Material ideologies: Building the city is a zine created collaboratively by students as the main output of the third-semester studio (2025), which considered the role of labor and resources subsumed through the process of urbanization.

In Spring 2025, as part of the second-semester studio Baltic Sea Imaginaries: Infrastructure, Politics, and Justice, students produced an exhibition exploring the urban political ecology of water in the Baltic area.

The Greetings from Shtromka website gathers documentation from the 2025 first-semester studio, which focused on the history and conflict in the namesake district of Tallinn facing gentrification pressure. The website for the 2024 studio, in which students engaged with the Paljassaare urban coastal wetland, can be viewed here.