Inequality and the City: Mapping the Ecology of Urban Segregation

Caitlyn Collins, Patty Heyda, David Cunningham

“Inequality and the City: Mapping the Ecology of Urban Segregation” is a research-based capstone course for undergraduate students in Sociology, Architecture and Urban Design. Team-taught by Professors Caitlyn Collins (Sociology), Patty Heyda (Urban Design and Architecture), and David Cunningham (Sociology), the seminar will examine the history, (re)development, and lived experience of urban segregation in St. Louis.

We take as our starting point a central tenet in sociological studies of urban inequality: that “one cannot understand social life without understanding the arrangements of particular social actors in particular social times and places” (Abbott 1997:1152). We therefore approach the study of segregation and inequality in St. Louis as deeply relational and contextual—that is, embedded in a particular space and place, and constituted through social relations.

We will first immerse students in both the canonical disciplinary literatures and contemporary academic debates about inequality, segregation, and social justice initiatives in urban cities across the U.S. The course will then pair this theoretical base—conceiving of segregation as multifaceted and durable, historical, spatial, and interpersonal—with intensive training in the methodological tools (archival research, mapping, diagramming, spatializing, interviewing, field observation) necessary to initiate collaborative research projects with community partners in neighborhoods across St. Louis. Local guest speakers (academic experts, community leaders, city residents) will enhance students’ classroom learning.

Support from The Divided City initiative will provide crucial funding to lay the foundation in 2017-2018 for this unique cross-school initiative, the first of its kind between these two schools that bookend the campus. Grant funds will enable the instructors to identify and draw on best practices and consultation from innovators in our respective fields (Javier Auyero, Professor of Sociology at The University of Texas at Austin, and Diane Davis, Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism at Harvard University) to develop this integrative theoretical and methodological foundation, and to build collaborative capacity as we initiate long-term partnerships between our departments and local communities. This course serves as the springboard for a multi-method, interdisciplinary, longitudinal study of segregation in St. Louis that will be institutionalized as a new research unit between schools (housed in Sociology) called the Social Inequality Lab.

The first iteration of the Inequality and the City course will be taught in spring 2019.

Caitlyn Collins is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis.
Patty Heyda is Associate Professor of Urban Design and Architecture in the Sam Fox School at Washington University in St. Louis.
David Cunningham is Professor of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis.