The City and You: Find Your Best Place

Go to Course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/city-and-you-find-best-place

Introduction

**Course Review: The City and You: Find Your Best Place** Coursera's course "The City and You: Find Your Best Place" brings an enriching exploration into the dynamics of urban living. Offered free of charge, this course offers valuable insights, equipping learners with the understanding and tools necessary to identify their ideal urban environment. **Course Overview** From the get-go, the course emphasizes the significance of cities in our globalized world. With over half of the planet's population residing in urban areas and projections indicating that this figure could climb to 85 percent, understanding cities becomes imperative. The course aims not just to inform, but to inspire critical thinking on the importance of urban settings — both personally and collectively. **Syllabus Highlights** 1. **Why Cities Matter**: This introductory segment sets the tone by discussing the vital contributions of cities to economic growth, societal well-being, and individual opportunities. It offers a refreshing perspective on how urban living impacts career trajectories and personal development. 2. **A World of Cities**: This module tackles the dichotomy of urbanization — the potential for enhanced living standards versus the harsh reality of slums. By diving deep into global urbanization, learners will grapple with the complexities and challenges faced by cities worldwide. 3. **The Creative City**: Creativity flourishes in urban environments, and this section underscores the historical significance of cities as centers of artistic and technological advancement. Understanding this interplay can help learners appreciate the cultural tapestry of urban life. 4. **The New Urban Crisis**: This session confronts the pressing issue of urban economic divides. The course thoughtfully examines how recent trends have affected socio-economic landscapes, making it a timely exploration of inequality within urban centers. 5. **Cities and the Covid-19 Crisis**: Perhaps one of the most relevant topics today, this module reflects on the pandemic's impact on urban settings. It provides context on how cities can evolve post-COVID and what challenges may persist. 6. **Find Your Best Place**: The course culminates in a personal application of learned concepts, helping learners navigate the all-important decision of where to live. This section promises to be particularly beneficial for those contemplating relocations or simply wishing to understand their current environments better. **Why I Recommend This Course** What sets "The City and You: Find Your Best Place" apart is its holistic approach. Not only does it explore urban dynamics, but it also encourages introspection and personal growth. The course nurtures critical thinking through evidence-based discussions and practical frameworks for making important life choices about where to live. The content is engaging, with expert insights woven throughout, making it suitable for anyone interested in urban studies, sociology, or simply looking to understand the modern urban landscape. Its free access makes it a fantastic opportunity for learners of all backgrounds. In conclusion, I highly recommend "The City and You: Find Your Best Place" for anyone seeking to deepen their understanding of urban environments and how these choices impact life directions. Join the community, share your thoughts, and embark on this journey of discovery—there’s much to learn and gain from exploring the city where you might find your best place.

Syllabus

Why Cities Matter

This session will help you to understand the importance of cities for both the economy and society, as well as, you and your family. Today, more than three and a half billion people live in cities, which is more than half of the world's population. That figure is projected to rise to as many as 10 billion people or 85 percent of the world's population over the next century. Cities are our premier platforms for generating new innovations, higher levels of economic growth, and new and better jobs. We will discuss why and how cities are important, and why picking the right city to live is important to your career, well-being, and life.

This session will help you understand the opportunities and challenges of urbanization around the world. Global urbanization has the power to lift living standards, create economic opportunity and jobs, reduce pollution, improve energy efficiency, and make the world safer. But, many cities in the developing world remain poor, with millions of people crowded into global slums.

Cities have been the fonts of creativity since the dawn of civilization. The clustering of creative people in them and the diversity they bring is what drives key advances in arts, culture, and technology. These wellsprings of human progress have always occurred in our great cities from Athens and Rome to London, New York, and the emerging economies in Asia. This session will help you better understand how the clustering of diverse groups of creative people in cities spurs artistic achievement, scientific and technological advance, and human progress.

This session will help you better understand the New Urban Crisis and the growing economic divides that challenge cities today. In the second half of the 20th century, society was divided between poorer cities and richer suburbs. But, over the past decade or so, affluent and educated people have flocked back to urban centers pushing poverty out to the suburbs. Today, middle-class neighborhoods are in decline and our societies are defined by small areas of concentrated advantaged surrounded by much larger areas of concentrated disadvantage spanning the city and its suburb alike.

This session will help you better understand how the Covid-19 crisis will change cities and their recovery challenges. Covid-19 is not the first pandemic to strike our cities, nor will it be the last. Over the long course of history, cities have often been hotbeds of contagion and infectious disease. But no pandemic, plague, or natural disaster has ever managed to stifle their growth. When this pandemic is over in a couple of years, maybe less, New York and London will still be the world’s great financial centers; the San Francisco Bay Area its hub of high technology; and Los Angeles its center for entertainment and film. Shanghai, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris, Toronto, and Sydney will all continue to be great global cities. But change will come to how and where we live and work. Our cities and society as a whole are likely to grow even more unequal than they are today, as both the disease and its economic fallout hit hardest at the least-advantaged. While some of these changes will prove to be evanescent, others may be permanent. Ultimately, the pandemic will be less of a break point or disruption, and more an accelerant to changes already afoot in our working and living patterns.

This session will help you understand the importance of where you live to your life and career. We each make three big decisions in our lives: our career, our choice of life-partner, and the place (city and neighborhood) where we live. We get lots of advice on the first two, but little on the third. Yet, choosing where to live is the most important decision of all. It shapes and influences the kinds of careers that we pursue and the kinds of people we will meet. This session provides you with the tools and a framework for choosing the place that is best for you and your family.