The City & You:

Find Your Best Place

Course Syllabus
by Richard Florida

Course Overview
The 21st century is the century of the city. More than half of the world’s people currently
live in cities, and that figure is projected to rise to as many as 10 billion people, 85 percent of
the world’s population, over the next century. By the turn of the next century, more people
will live in cities than currently populate the entire planet, peaking at around 10 billion. The
building of new cities and the retrofitting of our existing ones will require a collective invest-
ment of hundreds of trillions of dollars.

The city or community you choose to live in can shape our lives in powerful ways. In fact, it is
the most important of all life decisions we make, impacting everything we do — the careers
and jobs we have access to, the friends we make, the schools our children go to, even the
life-partners we take.

This course provides the tools needed to understand what cities do, why they matter, the
powerful forces shaping the greatest wave of urbanization in history, and how to pick the right
city for you. The course will also help you develop critical thinking skills. We’ll accomplish
this by providing evidence of the importance of cities, and why and how they matter to you.
Then we’ll ask you to apply what you’ve learned.

This course is accessible and open to anyone who is interested in learning more about cities and
the ways they affect our lives. It is organized around five key modules:

• Why Cities Matter

• A World of Cities
• The Creative City
• The New Urban Crisis
• Find Your Best Place.

Each module is designed around roughly two and a half hours of work from you — watching
course videos, completing readings and exercises, and participating in forums that will help
you to better understand cities and why they matter. Highlights will include some fun group
mapping activities and a personalized capstone activity that pulls it all together.

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After completing the course, you will be able to
• Identify what cities do and why they matter.
• Explain the role of cities in the global economy and the extent and implications of fast-growing urbanization.
• Outline the key characteristics of a creative and innovative city.
• Describe the social divides and challenges facing cities and the solutions cities are
using to address them.
• Recognize the trade-offs of staying in your current city versus moving, and identify
the best place for you and your family to live.

Grading
Quizzes: There are four quizzes on the material, worth 15 percent each for a combined 60
percent of your final grade.

Active Reflections: There are four active reflections which ask you to think critically about
course content and apply it to your life. These are worth 5 percent each for a combined 20
percent of your final grade.

Find Your City — Capstone Activity: In this final peer-reviewed assignment, apply what
you’ve learned to select the city that is best for you. Start with a list of three to five target
cities where you might want to live, including your own current city. Then use the Place
Finder Tool to get the overall rankings for your target cities and select the city that is best for
you. Write up your final assignment, detailing the process you went through, the score and
rankings of your target cities, the strengths and weaknesses of each, and the city you chose.
This final assignment is worth 20 percent of your final grade.

Course Certificate
If you are taking a course for a Coursera course certificate you will be expected to complete
the tests and assignments with a grade of 60 percent or greater.

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Module 1: Why Cities Matter
More than three and a half billion people live in cities, more than half of the world’s popula-
tion. That figure is projected to rise to as many as 10 billion, 85 percent of the world’s popu-
lation, over the next century. Cities are our premier platforms for generating new innovations,
higher levels of economic growth, and creating new and better jobs.

Learning Objectives:
• Understand the role of cities to the economy, politics, and society.
• Use your knowledge of cities to understand their importance in our lives as well as to
“you” the learner.

Module 2: A World of Cities

Global urbanization has the power to lift living standards, create jobs and economic opportu-
nity, reduce pollution, improve energy efficiency, and make the world safer. Yet, many cities
in the developing world remain poor, with millions crowded into global slums.

Learning Objectives:
• Understand global urbanization and the opportunities and challenges of cities around
the world.
• Apply your understanding of global urbanization to the global city closest to you.
• Integrate key concepts with observations of one’s own environment.

Module 3: The Creative City

Cities have been at the forefront of creativity since the dawn of civilization. The clustering of
creative people in them and the diversity they bring drives key advances in arts, culture, and
technology. These wellsprings of human progress have always occurred in our great cities
from Athens and Rome to London, New York, and the emerging economies in Asia.

Learning Objectives:
• Understand the role of cities in creativity (arts, music, design, fashion, food, and
more) as well as scientific and technological innovation.
• Apply your understanding of creativity and cities to the creative city closest to you.
• Identify an example of a “creative contribution” of a city near you.

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Module 4: The New Urban Crisis
For much of recent times, cities were divided between poor cities and rich suburbs. But
over the past decade or so, affluent and educated people have flocked back to urban centers,
pushing poverty out to the suburbs. Today, middle-class neighborhoods are in decline and our
cities are defined by small areas of concentrated advantaged surrounded by much larger areas
of concentrated disadvantage that span the urban core and suburbs alike. This is the crux of
the New Urban Crisis and the growing economic and social divides currently challenging our
cities.
Learning Objectives:
• Understand the economic and social divides affecting cities and suburbs.
• Apply your understanding of the divided city by identifying and explaining the divides
in your city.
• Analyze key factors influencing your local urban environment, their potential impact,
and the challenges of the “bads” as well as the “goods” of your city or community.

Module 5: Find Your Best Place

We each make three big decisions in our lives: our career, our choice of life-partner, and the
place (city and neighborhood) where we live. We get lots of advice on the first two, but little
on the third. Yet, choosing where to live is the most important decision of all. It shapes and
influences the kinds of careers that we pursue and the kinds of people we will meet.

Learning Objectives:
• Understand how your city or community affects you and your family’s lives.
• Apply concepts to pick the city or place you will live and/or understand the impact of
the place you live on your life.
• Develop a personal paradigm for one’s future, integrating key concepts regarding the
importance of cities.

Supplementary Materials
Please remember to check out the supplementary materials section for a deeper dive into each
module with additional readings.

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Research Announcement
Since 2013, the University of Toronto, Online Learning Strategies portfolio has been con-
ducting studies on MOOC design and on learning in MOOCs. Using this MOOC, re-
searchers will consider anonymized demographic data, participation and resource use, and
assignment submission to better understand the richness of learners’ experiences. The study
will in no way interfere with your grades as all assignments are either automatically graded
or peer assessed. Based on the Coursera Privacy Policy, by signing up for a Coursera ac-
count, users agree that Coursera may share their course data with partner institutions for
educational research. Data that we receive from Coursera includes a unique non-identifiable
learner-id for each learner and at the University of Toronto, we have no means to identify
any individual learner. Therefore we cannot accommodate requests for removal of course
data from the data sets we receive from Coursera. The research team will access data only
after a cohort is finished. If you have any questions regarding the study, please write to
online.learning@utoronto.ca.

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