This reading intensive seminar introduces students to issues of urban sustainability across time, space, and scale. We examine efforts by planners, activists, policy makers, and citizens to improve the urban environment over time, as well as the role cities might play in the creation of a more sustainable planetary future. While we look to current practices in the field, we are especially concerned to untangle the multiple, often competing discursive, political, and governance systems that shape urban sustainability work. A central interest of the course is how notions of environmental sustainability relate to questions of social justice, the share of resources, and the distribution of wealth. Students engage readings and other materials from a wide variety of fields, including social sciences, humanities, arts and design. In the end, the course challenges students to reflect on how they might integrate the tools and concepts from this course into their own work.