This course aims to achieve:
- Systematization of the range of issues that have been analyzed by urban studies, focusing on the historical evolution of cities, their contemporary social and urban problems and challenges as well as the field of policies to tackle these problems and challenges.
- Advanced and in depth training concerning the issues that seem more relevant in the current context of intense social and urban transformation in close collaboration with research centers involved.

In pursuing these objectives we seek to help students acquire the following competencies:
- Ability to carry out an integrated and multidisciplinary reflection, and develop independent research on the main problems of urban studies.
- Master the advanced knowledge about the diversity of issues and debates on key perspectives and approaches to the city.

The vast body of research and theoretical and conceptual analysis of the field of urban studies can be systematized in three axes of issues: the axis of the processes of urbanization and transformation of cities, the axis of the various nodes of the urban issues and the axis of public urban policies in order to tackle those problems.
The program is structured in the following modules:
1.Urban change dynamics: historical perspective of the city and urbanization processes; diversity of current models of city
2.Consumption and urban culture: consumption as a structural axis of the current urban economies, implications for urban life; expression of urban cultures and city policies
3.Housing and ways of living: analysing the centrality of the housing function to produce the city, diversity and social and urban inequalities; ways of living, urban mobility and lifestyles
4.Urban policies: sectoral policies; globalization and integrated and systemic city policies.

The evaluation model is based on the student participation in those presentations (50%) and the writing of a paper, on the state of the art of one of the urban studies issues presented (50%).

To present the main theoretical debates that take place in broad interdisciplinary field of urban studies at present, without forgetting the most important traditions in the disciplinary domains;
To encourage doctoral students to scientific interdisciplinarity through the diversification of theories and analytical points of view;
To sensitize students to the importance of concepts in the preparation of research process, adjusting them to issues to be developed over the course;
To promote critical reflection on urban processes, its interpretations by social and political agents involved in the processes of evaluation and decision;
To encourage understanding of long-term processes in the analysis of urban change and its consequences in specific territories;
To enable students to articulate between the theories presented and the processes in analysis, for its explanation in a sustained manner.

The syllabus is organized into 5 modules that synthesize complementary theories that focus on the analysis of urban phenomena.
It will be approached from Chicago School, to French School of Social Morphology, to social thinkers and planners of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to philosophers of the city, to the current theories on globalization and to urban revitalization and metropolitan segregation. A first module focuses on disciplinary traditions of sociology and anthropology, drawing on concepts which are relevant. A second deals with images and representations of the city in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from the perspective of urbanism. A third module is marked on the look of the architect about the city, recurring to theory and practice of thinking about space. In fourth module it will be debated how power relations evolve urban territory and fifth module is a reflection of new forms of governance that impress contemporary dynamics in cities.

The evaluation of the student shall be the sum of the monitoring activities of asset classes and discussion of the texts presented (30%) and the final report resulting from a unique reflection of its development and discussed with the teachers (70%).

1.To present and discuss several methodologies and techniques of research in urban issues based on empirical cases, which stimulate understanding of different point of views and practices;
2.To sensitize students to different disciplinary perspectives in urban research, including anthropology, sociology, history and geography, within its qualitative, quantitative, historical, cartographic, documentary aspects.
3.To encourage and train the exercise of an open and multidimensional inquiry adapted to the dynamism of urban realities;
4.To promote critical thinking and encourage creativity in the choice of sources and research methods, diversity of spaces, temporalities, scales of observation and analysis.

The program is organized into four thematic modules that present approaching ways to the urban complexity, from different angles of observation and analysis. Each module consists of two to four sessions as we discuss specific cases of this research that clarify methodological variety.
1. Introduction: objectives, work system, evaluation
Part I: City and ethnography
2: The case and the context: for an urban ethnography
3. Ethnography on the move:
Urban networks, glocal spaces and contexts of interaction
4. Participant observation, recording and analysis of fieldnotes
5. Observation of the multi-situated ethnography 'virtual'. The case of hip-hop culture.
Part II: City maps / SIGS
8. Cities as habitats for innovation
9. The Geographic Information Technologies in Planning Analysis
Part III: City and numbers
6. From qualitative to quantitative: topological design of urban space
7. From topology to typology: clustering in urban space
Part IV: City and archives
10. Social spaces and individual trajectories in urban history: sources and interpretations
11. The margins of nineteenth-century city
12. Final Summary

In addition to classroom participation, and reading the literature advised, each student should develop a practical exercise which should help the methodological development of his PhD project, creatively using some different techniques and methodologies learned .The student evaluation will be the sum of activities of different classes of active monitoring (20%) and a final report based on practical methodological exercise (50%) and discussion with teachers (30%).

OA1 - Design and develop a research project in urban studies demonstrating that dominates the literature and be able to select and process information from different sources.
OA2 - Master the conceptual, theoretical and methodological tools to conduct original research in urban studies.
OA3 - Define the supports research literature.
OA4 - To develop the capacity for critical analysis and communication on the topics under study.

CP1 - Presentation and discussion of research development for the planning of the doctoral thesis project.
CP2 - Research to present should consider the following points:
- Delimitation of thema and search field to develop.
- Identification of the problem.
- Definition of the object of study and research objectives.
- Literature revision.
- Definition of a methodology.
- Definition of dissemination strategies of research findings.

The assessment is individual and will focus on:
1. Participation in seminars (intercalary presentations) - 20%.
2. Elaboration of a thesis project in the area of urban studies - 50%.
3. Presentation and discussion of the project in the final sessions - 30%.

This UC aims at framing, in seminars, the research work of each individual student. This individual work constitutes most of the ECTS. Being the process of doctoral research an individual one, the course of research of each student will be followed, in this thesis seminar, in a collective and guided manner, through the presentation of ongoing work and discussion. This UC also will include the presentation of consolidated research by guest speakers, national and foreign, according to the thematic lines defined from concrete investigations of doctoral candidates. One of the purposes of the thesis seminar is to train and prepare students to present a clear, concise, objective and compelling their interim results of research, both written, and oral and visual material. Ethical issues will be emphasized.

Being an interdisciplinary doctoral course of study, it is impossible to anticipate what the programmatic lines of the seminar which aims to theoretically and methodologically monitor the development of individual doctoral theses. At the beginning of each academic year a schedule of sessions will be organized, biweekly, based on survey on current research, including conferences by visiting scientists as part of the programmes of the research lines and of the ongoing projects, of research centres and institutions both associated with this course of study.

At the end of each year's work, the doctoral candidate must submit a progress report, in line with a publishable scientific paper. This report will be presented at the seminar and submitted to a national or international journal.