This course introduces students to ways to approach, understand, and improve cities focusing on New York City and other large metropolitan areas around the world. The first part familiarizes students with ways to approach cities, their historic development, their shifting and expanding urban landscapes, and the complex social and cultural life unfolding in them. The second part applies these concepts in order to examine several contemporary urban problems including increasing urban inequality, urban poverty and homelessness, xenophobia and racism, increasing surveillance and social control, and infrastructural problems, all of which hint to bigger economic, social, and political problems in cities. The course concludes with a critical examination of current urban policy and planning and ideas about urban reform.