Explores the processes through which segments of societies come to understand their natural surroundings, the social relations that produce those understandings, popular representations of nature, and how 'the environment' serves as a consistent basis of social struggle and contestation.
Areas of focus: Environmental Geography; Social/Cultural Geography

Land reform, which entails the redistribution of private and public lands, is broadly associated with struggles for social justice. It embraces issues concerning how land is transferred (through forceful dispossession, law, or markets), and how it is currently held. Land inequalities exist all over the world, but they are more pronounced in the developing world, especially in countries that were affected by colonialism. Land issues, including land reform, affect most development issues.
Area of focus: Environmental Geography

This course addresses the translation of environmentalisms into formalized processes of environmental governance; and examines the development of environmental institutions at different scales, the integration of different forms of environmental governance, and the ways in which processes of governance relate to forms of environmental practice and management.
Area of focus: Environmental Geography

Location of a firm; market formation and areas; agricultural location; urban spatial equilibrium; trade and spatial equilibrium; locational competition; equilibrium for an industry; trade and location.
Area of focus: Urban Geography

Engages Indigenous perspectives on the environment and environmental issues. Students will think with Indigenous concepts, practices, and theoretical frameworks to consider human-environment relations. Pressing challenges and opportunities with respect to Indigenous environmental knowledge, governance, law, and justice will be explored. With a focus primarily on Canada, the course will include case studies from the US, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand

This course covers advanced theoretical and practical issues of using GIS systems for research and spatial analysis. Students will learn how to develop and manage GIS research projects, create and analyze three-dimensional surfaces, build geospatial models, visualize geospatial data, and perform advanced spatial analysis. Lectures introduce concepts and labs implement them.

Explores the practice of ethnography (i.e. participant observation) within and outside the discipline of geography, and situates this within current debates on methods and theory. Topics include: the history of ethnography, ethnography within geography, current debates within ethnography, the "field," and ethnography and "development."

This course builds on introductory statistics and GIS courses by introducing students to the core concepts and methods of spatial analysis. With an emphasis on spatial thinking in an urban context, topics such as distance decay, distance metrics, spatial interaction, spatial distributions, and spatial autocorrelation will be used to quantify spatial patterns and identify spatial processes. These tools are the essential building blocks for the quantitative analysis of urban spatial data.
Area of focus: Urban Geography

This course examines issues of urban form and structure, urban growth and planning in the Toronto region. Current trends in population, housing, economy, environment, governance, transport, urban design and planning practices at the local level and the regional scale will be examined critically.
Area of focus: Urban Geography

Significant recent transformations of geographic knowledge are being generated by the ubiquitous use of smartphones and other distributed sensors, while web-based platforms such as Open Street Map and Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) have made crowd-sourcing of geographical data relatively easy. This course will introduce students to these new geographical spaces, approaches to creating them, and the implications for local democracy and issues of privacy they pose.
Area of focus: Urban Geography

The last 50 years have seen dramatic growth in the global share of population living in megacities over 10 million population, with most growth in the global south. Such giant cities present distinctive infrastructure, health, water supply, and governance challenges, which are increasingly central to global urban policy and health.
Area of focus: Urban Geography

Examination and discussion of current trends and issues in human geography, with particular emphasis on recent developments in concepts and methods. This course is an unique opportunity to explore a particular topic in-depth, the specific content will vary from year to year.

This course introduces students to the main methods of multivariate analysis in the social sciences, with an emphasis on applications incorporating spatial thinking and geographic data. Students will learn how to evaluate data quality, construct analysis datasets, and perform and interpret multivariate analyses using the R statistical programming language.

This course uses street food to comparatively assess the production of ‘the street’, the legitimation of bodies and substances on the street, and contests over the boundaries of, and appropriate use of public and private space. It also considers questions of labour and the culinary infrastructure of contemporary cities around the world.

Area of Focus: Social/Cultural Geography
Same as FSTC43H3

Deals with two main topics: the origins of environmental problems in the global spread of industrial capitalism, and environmental conservation and policies. Themes include: changes in human-environment relations, trends in environmental problems, the rise of environmental awareness and activism, environmental policy, problems of sustainable development.
Area of focus: Environmental Geography

How have social and economic conditions deteriorated for many urban citizens? Is the geographic gap widening between the rich and the poor? This course will explore the following themes: racialization of poverty, employment and poverty, poverty and gender socio-spatial polarization, and housing and homelessness.
Area of focus: Urban Geography

Explores the social geography of education, especially in cities. Topics include geographical educational inequalities; education, class and race; education, the family, and intergenerational class immobility; the movement of children to attend schools; education and the ‘right to the city.’
Areas of focus: Urban or Social/Cultural Geography

Provides an opportunity to engage in a field trip and field research work on a common research topic. The focus will be on: preparation of case study questions; methods of data collection including interviews, archives, and observation; snowballing contacts; and critical case-study analysis in a final report.

An independent studies course open only to students in the Major Program in Human Geography. An independent studies project will be carried out under the supervision of an individual faculty member.

Designed for final-year Human Geography Majors, this seminar is devoted to analysis and discussion of advanced theoretical and methodological issues in Environmental Geography. Specific content will vary from year to year. Seminar format with active student participation.
Area of focus: Environmental Geography

How do gender relations shape different spaces? We will explore how feminist geographers have approached these questions from a variety of scales - from the home, to the body, to the classroom, to the city, to the nation, drawing on the work of feminist geographers.
Area of focus: Social/Cultural Geography

Examines links between health and human sexuality. Particularly explores sexually transmitted infections. Attention will be given to the socially and therefore spatially constructed nature of sexuality. Other themes include sexual violence, masculinities and health, reproductive health, and transnational relationships and health. Examples will be taken from a variety of countries.
Area of focus: Social/Cultural Geography

Designed for final-year Human Geography Majors, this reading-intensive seminar course develops analytical and methodological skills in socio-spatial analysis. We explore major theoretical/methodological traditions in geography including positivism, humanism, Marxism, and feminism, and major analytical categories such as place, scale, and networks. Particularly recommended for students intending to apply to graduate school.

Designed for final-year Human Geography Majors, this seminar is devoted to analysis and discussion of current theoretical and methodological issues in human geography. This course is an unique opportunity to explore a particular topic in-depth, the specific content will vary from year to year. Seminar format with active student participation.

This course focuses on the practice of ethnography in geographic research and allows students to design and conduct their own ethnographic research projects. Utilizing various approaches in geographic scholarship, in the first part of the course students will learn about ethnographic research methods and methodologies and finalize their research proposals. In the second part, they will carry out their research under the supervision of the course director and with support from their peers. Course assignments will assist each student throughout their research design, ethics approval, ethnography, and writing a final paper. Course meetings will be conducted in a seminar format.

Examines links between politics of difference, social justice and cities. Covers theories of social justice and difference with a particular emphasis placed on understanding how contemporary capitalism exacerbates urban inequalities and how urban struggles such as Occupy Wall Street seek to address discontents of urban dispossession. Examples of urban social struggles will be drawn from global North and South.
Areas of focus: Urban or Social/Cultural Geography

How do sex and gender norms take and shape place? To examine this question, we will explore selected queer and trans scholarship, with a particular emphasis on queer scholars of colour and queer postcolonial literatures. Course topics include LGBTQ2S lives and movements, cities and sexualities, cross-border migration flows, reproductive justice, and policing and incarceration.

As major engines of the global economy, cities are also concentrated sites of work and employment. Popular and political understandings about what constitutes "fair" and "decent" work, meanwhile, are currently facing profound challenges. From the rise of platformed gig work to the rising cost of living in many cities – this course introduces students to approaches within Geography that help to conceptualize what "work" is, and to major forces shaping the laboured landscapes of cities, with a focus on the Greater Toronto Area. In this course students will get the opportunity to explore the varied forms of production and reproduction that make the GTA function and thrive, and to develop a vocabulary and critical lens to identify the geographies of different kinds of work and employment relations. Students will also have the chance to develop labour market research skills, and to critically examine the forms of work they themselves undertake every day.

Designed for final-year Human Geography Majors, this seminar is devoted to analysis and discussion of current theoretical and methodological issues in urban geography. Specific content will vary from year to year. Seminar format with active student participation.
Area of focus: Urban Geography

Students will design, manage and complete a research project using GIS. Students will work in teams of 4-6 to pose a research question, acquire a dataset, and organize and analyze the data to answer their question. The course will teach research design, project management, data analysis, team work, and presentation of final results.