ECON 323 Urban Economics
Cities are great places to live where people gather, interact and generate new ideas. At the same time, this high concentration of people in one place gives rise to problems such as traffic, pollution and crime. In this course, we are going to apply principles of economics to understand how cities came to be and why some cities are bigger than others. We are going to debate whether cities' high wage premium and nice amenities like parks and malls make up for the high living costs--especially of housing. We will delve into the challenges of providing good public education and transportation in highly dense areas and end by discussing potential reasons and solutions for observed spatial inequality.