The Urban Studies DUG and Architecture DUG were thrilled to collaborate for this Gingerbread House-Making Social.

Urban Studies concentrator Ayan Rahman ‘24 shares his experience studying social and environmental issues induced by climate change

Ayan Rahman ‘24 declared his concentration in Urban Studies after taking classes where he learned about the development of cities, studying social phenomena, as well as other urban studies topics. As someone who grew up in New York, the coursework really resonated with him. During his second year at Brown, Rahman took his first Community-Based Learning and Research course, “Urban Agriculture: The Importance of Localized Food Systems,” which he felt also tied his interest in Urban Studies to working with community partners such as the Rhode Island Food Policy Council (RIFPC).

With the RIFPC, Rahman has worked in areas of Rhode Island that experience food apartheid or food insecurity and collaborated with municipal organizations to define health equity zones. Rahman collaborated with other students to create a handbook about how municipal organizations can work with community organizations to improve food outcomes within health equity zones. For example, promoting the practice of urban agriculture and investing in grocery stores in those areas.

In the fall semester of his junior year, Rahman learned more about the Edward Guiliano Global Fellowship which supports engaged scholarship, artistic and research projects around the world. He proposed a project in Bangladesh where he would record climate refugees’ experiences and observe rural-to-urban migration patterns in areas that suffered from environmental degradation.

“I wanted to study climate refugee experiences,” Rahman says, “There has been a rising trend and higher influx of people migrating to cities because of environmental issues induced by climate change. The project was looking into how can we ensure that there is enough of an infrastructure, structural support for people moving into these cities and spaces? And what are the implications for the future trajectories of Bangladesh, and the capital city in regard to the climate change? What are we going to be able to do to improve resilience? That’s how I started the project through the Guiliano Fellowship. Along the way I thought I could really do something with this thesis. And so in my second semester, I applied to the Royce Fellowship at the Swearer Center. I thought, ‘How do I expand this?’”

After receiving the Royce Fellowship, Rahman continued his fieldwork in Bangladesh, working with the International Center for Climate Change and Development, where he interviewed stakeholders within Bangladeshi settlements and studied the relationship between community and landholder.

Reflecting on his different engagement experiences through Swearer, Rahman shares, “​​I'm meeting people that are doing projects that are so vastly different from mine, but still tied by that same thread of community engagement. Being in a community with other people and witnessing the power of community organizing when people are mobilized for the same cause, focusing on community needs and creating interventions and solutions based around those needs is what inspires me to continue this work.”

After he graduates, Rahman hopes to continue postgraduate studies and research in urban revitalization, urban regeneration, and bottom-up approaches to community building.

Professor James Morone on 40 years of teaching a course that’s become a Brown classic.

The Urban Studies Program celebrated the accomplishments of senior concentrators on Sunday, May 28th, 2023 at the University’s Commencement ceremonies.

The Urban Studies Program celebrated the accomplishments of senior concentrators on Wednesday, April 28th, 2021.

Prayers for the People: Homicide and Humanity in the Crescent City (University of Chicago Press, 2019)

Katherina Galor shares an introduction to her forthcoming book co-authored with Sa’ed Atshan (Duke University Press, 2020).

The pandemic should make us rethink our engagement beyond our borders.

Samuel Zipp, professor of American studies and urban studies at Brown University, is author of "The Idealist: Wendell Willkie’s Wartime Quest to Build One World."

Samuel Zipp
March 2020
Harvard University Press

Student research bolstered legislation to stop housing discrimination in R.I.

Featuring a catalogue of works and new photography, Mies van der Rohe is an ambitious critical monograph that aims to challenge the established narrative of this seminal architect. Dietrich Neumann takes a nonhagiographic approach, driven by the importance of context—social, political, and architectural—for understanding the architect’s life and work. Organized chronologically, Neumann consults contemporary responses to Mies’s work, competition entries, building codes, structural and material qualities of built forms, and detailed looks at the work on the drafting table in Mies’s office and those of his collaborators. He attributes two previously unknown houses to Mies and several smaller projects; these further complicate typical biographies of Mies which present his work as a series of masterpieces. Neumann notably provides a nuanced portrait of Mies’s relationship with his benefactors, including his refusal to take a stand against the Nazi government for fear that doing so would compromise any potential commissions.

Rebecca Louise Carter
July 2019
University of Chicago Press
Co-winner, 2020 Edie Turner First-Book Prize in Ethnographic Writing

Reconstructing Architecture: Sifting through visual language in the built environment can decode messages and ideas.

Itohan Osayimwese is an architectural historian at Brown, but she works much like an archaeologist, sifting through visual language to see how it is translated into messages and ideas. Osayimwese believes that many people still don’t think of Germany as a colonial power of the 19th century and do not understand the country’s modern architectural history in relation to larger developments worldwide. When Osayimwese, an assistant professor of history of art and architecture, did the research for what became the book Colonialism and Modern Architecture in Germany, she aimed at widening the conceptual and geographic lens of architectural history.

The Society of Architectural Historians is pleased to announce the 2019 class of SAH Fellows. Dolores Hayden, David Van Zanten, Dietrich Neumann and Richard Guy Wilson will be inducted as Fellows of the Society of Architectural Historians on Thursday, April 25, 2019, during the SAH 72nd Annual International Conference awards ceremony in Providence, Rhode Island. SAH Fellows are individuals who have distinguished themselves by a lifetime of significant contributions to the field of architectural history, such as scholarship, service to SAH or stewardship of the built environment.

This April, junior urban studies concentrator Garrett Robinson was awarded the Royce Fellowship. Robinson’s research delves into a pressing urban studies problem: luxury development and displacement in communities of color.

Urban Studies Department to fund HOPE and the Summit on Homelessness and Poverty as a named partner

On July 29 (“Keep depot off State House lawn”), the Providence Journal’s editorial board argued against the proposed location for the new bus terminal on the grounds of the Rhode Island State House, and asked for alternative solutions: “Are there any creative thinkers out there?"

In its heyday, the Jewelry District was not just the hub of the city’s costume jewelry industry. It was also a lively, densely built residential neighborhood packed with houses, schools and churches.

We are writing to compliment The Providence Journal’s editorial board for its superb editorial on Nov. 20 ("Rhode Island needs towering aspirations") urging Rhode Island residents to keep an open mind about a proposal for three residential high-rises (Hope Point Towers) from New York developer Jason Fane.

Josh Pacewicz
December 2016
University of Chicago Press

A career-spanning selection of previously uncollected writings and talks by the legendary author and activist, edited by Samuel Zipp and Nathan Storring - September 2016

No link between graffiti and serious crime, written by Stefano Bloch, Presidential Diversity Scholar

In the New York Daily News, Jim Morone and David Blumenthal discuss the history of presidential candidates hiding illnesses. "Take John F. Kennedy. He radiated youth and vigor — and hid the fact that few Presidents have been sicker or more heavily medicated."

"A Push to Rebuild a Modernist Gem by Mies"

Presidential Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow Stefano Bloch's article, "Place-Based Elicitation: Interviewing Graffiti Writers at the Scene of the Crime," can be found online.

City to spend $13 million to construct enhanced transit corridor.

"For candidates, the Iowa caucus is all about getting to know everyday Americans-- or is it?"

Direction Home, a film by Hilary Silver on issues surrounding homelessness, premieres this week on PBS. The film follows seven homeless people living in Rhode Island over seven years as they search for a permanent home.

Howard P. Chudacoff
December 2015
University of Illinois Press

Direction Home follows seven homeless people over seven years until they have a home. They were Initially living in Welcome Arnold shelter in Cranston, RI until 2007 when Governor Carcieri decided to demolish the building to make way for a new State Police Headquarters that was ultimately never built on the site. The film tracks and periodically re-interviews the characters about where and how they are living. The film also chronicles the efforts of housing activists, tent city residents, and service providers. It reveals some of the reasons why people become chronically homeless, why Housing First and permanent supportive housing policies are ultimately effective in ending homelessness, and why rights for the homeless are so important. The film was made with the support of RI Council for the Humanities and Brown University and the assistance of Brown University students.

The restricted data of the report “creates a city within a city” and makes the East Side “a privileged island,” Bloch said. If the report had included crime statistics from the West Side of Providence, overall crime would appear to be much higher, he said, adding that the East Side is much safer than other areas of the city.

Recipients of the second round of Global Experiential Learning and Teaching grants have been announced. The GELT program, unveiled in the summer of 2014, provides support for faculty to embed an education abroad component into an on-campus course.

More than a bus stop: Providence’s Kennedy Plaza reopens as gathering place

Edited by Sandy Isenstadt, Margaret Maile Petty, Dietrich Neumann
January 2015
Routledge

The website, designed with the help of Ashley So, acts as a repository for student papers and projects from "Crime and the City" (URBN 1230), a course about the socio-spatial construction and understanding of contemporary urban criminality taught by Professor Stefano Bloch (Urban Studies).

A new bus-tour series hosted by the Urban Studies Program at Brown University aims to reveal the city through the eyes of Brown professors.

"Ten More Years: Gang Sentence Enhancement Legislation in Rhode Island" by Mika Kligler

A Ferguson teach-in was hosted on campus by the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America. Urban Studies Professors James Morone and Stefano Bloch were on the panel.

James A. Morone
September 2014
University Press of Kansas

The Providence Journal featured Dietrich Neumann's fall 2012 studio seminar, co-taught with Friedrich St. Florian of RISD and Ed Mitchell of Yale, on its front page (May 7, 2013). Teams of Brown and RISD students enrolled in "Land Use Planning: The I-195 Parcels" (URBN 1900) designed new uses for the downtown land left vacant by the dismantling and moving of the interstate highway. Their models were the subject of a catalog and exhibited to the public. The class and the publication were fully sponsored by Urban Studies.