Past Courses

Summer 2009

Spring 2009

City & Regional Planning 190: Nairobi Summer Design Studio
Professor Jason Corburn

Over the summer of 2009, a team of UC Berkeley undergraduate and graduate students, led by DCRP Associate Professor Jason Corburn, focused on providing alternatives to the river clean-up displacement plan for informal settlements in the Mathare Valley of Nairobi. The interdisciplinary team of students and faculty are partnering with Kenyan-based NGOs Pamoja Trust and Muungano va Wanjivivi, students and faculty from the University of Nairobi’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning among others.

During the summer studio course, students researched and created housing and infrastructure upgrade plans to improve river water quality by limiting pollution while also improving living conditions. The hope is that comprehensive social, physical, and environmental plans can help residents build political power, avoid eviction, and begin to address widespread discrimination, insecurity, and marginalization that slum dwellers often experience. In August 2009, the students will travel to Nairobi in order to refine these plans in collaboration with their partners.

Jason Corburn is an associate professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and a member of the Global Metropolitan Studies initiative at UC Berkeley. He co-directs the joint Master of City Planning (MCP) and Master of Public Health (MPH) degree program at UC Berkeley. [More Details]

Spring 2009

Civil & Environmental Engineering 290: Design for Sustainable Communities
*This course was also supported in 2007 and 2008
Professor Ashok Gadgil
MW 10:00am – 12:00pm | 24 Wheeler

This course provides concepts and hands-on design experience with innovative products or processes for improving sustainability of communities. The focus will be resource-constrained communities (mostly poor ones in the developing countries). Teams of three or four students each will take on separate practical projects, with guidance from subject experts, to help mature technical/scientific innovations into useful products or processes.
Student teams will have the option to define their own project with the instructor’s approval, or may choose from a variety of existing opportunities. For every project, a research mentor is required.

Ashok Gadgil is a Professor in Civil & Environmental Engineering and is a Senior Scientist and Deputy Director (for Strategic Planning) in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

History 114B: Cities & Citizenship in South Asia
Professor Janaki Nair
MWF 1:00 – 2:00pm | 182 Dwinelle | CCN: 39489 | 4 units

How has the city in South Asia historically been the site where notions of citizenship, particularly as they concern the urban poor, were crafted, contested or redefined? This course will explore the modern history of South Asia (19th and 20th centuries) through its cities, to consider some of the enduring consequences of colonial rule/nationalist politics and post colonial policies for the contemporary predicaments of the working poor.

Janaki Nair is Professor of History at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, and is most recently the author of the book The Promise of the Metropolis: Bangalore’s Twentieth Century (OUP, 2005).

Peace and Conflict Studies 119: Vulnerability and Resilience in Armed Conflicts and Post-Conflict Settings
Professor Francesca Giovannini
MW 4:00 – 5:30pm | 30 Wheeler | CCN: 66733 | 4 units

This course seeks to examine the concept of “social vulnerability” in armed conflicts and post conflict setting by analyzing specifically the numerous roles that children, youth and women play (or are forced to) in ethnic civil conflicts. Departing from the analysis of theories of ethnic warfare and international peacemaking, the course will offer a broad overview of the legal and policy tools developed by the International Community to protect vulnerable categories.

Francesca Giovannini has over five years of experience serving in international organizations and NGOs and has most recently served as lecturer in the International and Area Studies Teaching Program since 2007.

UGBA 196, Section 1: Entrepreneurship to Address Global Poverty
Professor John Danner
Thursday 4:00 – 7:00pm | C230 Cheit | CCN: 08712 | 3 units

Can you do good and do well at the same time? This course explores how entrepreneurial ventures can help address global poverty in ways that do not depend primarily on foreign aid, corporate social responsibility initiative, philanthropy, or volunteerism to be sustainable. You will hear perspectives from faculty experts as well as directly from this new breed of entrepreneurs active around the globe.

John Danner, Senior Fellow of The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, brings extensive experience to the classroom as an entrepreneur, advisor to global enterprises and emerging ventures, and as a former senior executive in state and federal government.

Fall 2008

Energy and Resources Group 175: Water and Development Professor Isha Ray
185 Barrows
T/Th 12:30pm – 2pm
CCN: 27432

This course is organized around the following central question: (How) can water resources be managed with the multiple goals of sustainable use, economic development, poverty alleviation and equity? This course will tackle the problems of water access and use in developing countries; the potential for technological, social and economic solutions to these problems, especially at local levels; the role of institutions (states, NGOs, markets…) in increasing access to water and sanitation; and the pitfalls of and assumptions behind some popular ‘solutions’. The course will draw on insights from public health, institutional economics, environmental politics and sociology, and technological interventions.

INFORMATION 190: Poverty and Technology Professor Jenna Burrell
110 South Hall
MW 10:30am – 12pm
CCN: 42503

This course will encourage students to think broadly about the interplay between technological systems, social processes, economics, and political contingencies in efforts to alleviate poverty. Students will come to understand poverty not only in terms of high-level indicators, but from a ground-level perspective as ‘the poor’ experience and describe it for themselves. The role played by individuals and societies of the developing world as active agents in processes of technology adoption and use will be a central theme. Technologies’ connection to socio-economic development efforts will be put into historical context by exposing students to several phases of intensive interest including the ‘green revolution,’ the push towards industrialization, the ‘appropriate technologies’ movement, and more recent interest in digital technologies. In our discussion of ‘information technologies’ we will explore not only key form factors such as computers, the Internet, and mobile phones, but also their incorporation into broader practices such as micro-business and agriculture.

Spring 2007

Economics 172: Issues in African Economic Development
Professor Edward Miguel

This course examines major current issues in development economics, with a focus on how they relate to Sub-Saharan Africa. The course covers both the core economic theories and statistical methods, as well as relevant historical and political topics.

Edward Miguel is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center of Evaluation for Global Action at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 2000.

Public Health 181: Population and Poverty
Professor Malcolm Potts

This course provides a rigorous understanding of the relationships between population growth factor in the world’s poorest countries and regions, poverty, and women’s autonomy and health.

Malcolm Potts is the Bixby Professor of Population and Family Planning in the School of Public Health.