Address Universally Pressing Urban Problems in a World-class City

The research interests of CCC students on the Urban Studies track have ranged across a wide horizon of topics: community-engaged approaches to historic preservation and public history, socio-spatial power structures, tactical arts platforms and spatial advocacy, collaborative labor, the gig economy, race and urbanization in the U.S. south, gentrification and spatial inequity, mobility studies and social justice, the informal economy and food studies in the global south, creative placemaking and equitable urban development, arts education and urban educational reform, global urbanization and post-disaster reconstruction, and urban social movement outcomes.

Dissertations by Urban Studies-CCC track students have included the following:

• Wesley Webb Cheek (PhD 2019), “The Paradox of Community Involvement: Post-Disaster Reconstruction in Minamisanriku Japan”
• Sarah Madison Woodward (PhD 2020), “Will the Arts Come Marching In? Access to Arts Education Within the New Orleans Education Reform Movement”
• Heidi Parker Schmalbach (PhD 2021), “The Romance and Reality of Creativity in New Orleans's Post-Katrina Rebuilding”
• Ryan Carl Albright (PhD 2022), “Philanthropy, Non-Profits, and the Potential for Harm: The Role of Design, Implementation, and Evaluation Within Disaster Recovery Funding in Post-Katrina New Orleans”

Recent interdisciplinary faculty initiatives have opened new opportunities for CCC students to study the effects of climate change in urban environments as well as the challenges that cities face in providing water security, whether water is dangerously scarce or abundant.

CCC students on the Urban Studies track routinely rotate as teaching assistants through the foundational courses required for the undergraduate Urban Studies Minor.

Above: New Orleans skyline (photo by Jackson Hill, © 2016).