Two
Cities: New York and Toronto is the flagship course of the Urban
Studies Program at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. For more than two
decades
it has been taught by Professors Pat McGuire (from the Economics Department)
and Jim Spates (from the Sociology Department). At the heart of the course--in
addition to the classroom sessions, readings, and films which focus on
these premier cities--is a (mid-semester) five-day trip to each city,
trips during which the professors take the students everywhere you'd
expect and a lot of places you wouldn't expect; trips designed, in the
context of daily
tours shepherded by major figures in each city (former mayors, world-renowned
urban specialists, guides at the top of their
profession), to introduce New York and Toronto at "street-level";
trips designed to have students meet, in the time available, as many
people who live in these cities--rich, poor, of all races, many religions,
CEOs, homeless people--as possible. Such a "hands-on" approach,
Professors McGuire and Spates agree, is the best way for students to
discover that
cities are alive, accessible, changing, and changeable places, as well
as to learn--again from personal experience--just how different two major
urban centers can be. In other words, this is a course which studies
two world cities from the perspective of two different academic disciplines
in two different cultural settings. In this regard, one of the great
lessons students take from this course is an understanding of what it
means to create and live in a city within an American cultural framework
as compared to one in a Canadian cultural framework. Taken as a whole,
the experience of "Two Cities" is intended to introduce students
to the whole spectrum of courses in the Urban Studies Program.
The pictures show the students and professors from the 2004 course outside
the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto (first picture, top right), the
same group in Long Island City (across the street from where Professor
McGuire was born) with the Manhattan skyline in the background (second
picture, top right), Professors McGuire and Spates with world-renowned
city expert Jane Jacobs (see link, left hand column), recipient of the
First President’s Medal from Hobart and William Smith Colleges
on her porch in Toronto (picture on left), and Professors McGuire and
Spates with the New York skyline receding in the background as the group
left the city on the Staten Island Ferry (picture, bottom right).
Two
Cities: New York and Toronto is the flagship course of the Urban
Studies Program at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. For more than two
decades
it has been taught by Professors Pat McGuire (from the Economics Department)
and Jim Spates (from the Sociology Department). At the heart of the course--in
addition to the classroom sessions, readings, and films which focus on
these premier cities--is a (mid-semester) five-day trip to each city,
trips during which the professors take the students everywhere you'd
expect and a lot of places you wouldn't expect; trips designed, in the
context of 
daily
tours shepherded by major figures in each city (former mayors, world-renowned
urban specialists, guides at the top of their
profession), to introduce New York and Toronto at "street-level";
trips designed to have students meet, in the time available, as many
people who live in these cities--rich, poor, of all races, many religions,
CEOs, homeless people--as possible. Such a "hands-on" approach,
Professors McGuire and Spates agree, is the best way for students to
discover that
cities are alive, accessible, changing, and changeable places, as well
as to learn--again from personal experience--just how different two 
major
urban centers can be. In other words, this is a course which studies
two world cities from the perspective of two different academic disciplines
in two different cultural settings. In this regard, one of the great
lessons students take from this course is an understanding of what it
means to create and live in a city within an American cultural framework
as compared to one in a Canadian cultural framework. Taken as a whole,
the experience of "Two Cities" is intended to introduce students
to the whole spectrum of courses in the Urban Studies Program.
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