Global Metropolitan Studies established a field of study at Berkeley to address major transformations in cities around the world, and to change how we study cities. Urbanization brings a range of new political configurations and challenges—ecological crises, processes of democratization and de-democratization, urban marginality, and emergent strategies of recognition and resistance. Global Metropolitan Studies is a community of scholars across disciplines at Berkeley that investigates these new challenges and politics of the new urban century.
The 21st century will be an urban century with more people around the world residing in metropolitan regions than in any other form of human settlement. This urbanization is taking place in both the global North and the global South. Its implications are widespread: from environmental challenges to entrenched patterns of segregation to new configurations of politics and social movements. The Global Metropolitan Studies program is concerned with this urban condition.
Bringing together numerous faculty, this multidisciplinary endeavor supports research and houses graduate curricula. GMS sponsors a Designated Emphasis, a certificate program to support PhD scholarship in the field. It is one of a handful of Designated Emphases selected by the UC Berkeley campus to mark a new generation of scholarship and to consolidate an emerging academic field. GMS also supports interdisciplinary research communities with research funding opportunities and by sponsoring student groups.
Learn more: http://metrostudies.berkeley.edu/