The Cities Program at Trinity College is an innovative, nonmajor program that examines cities-past, present, and future-in all their extraordinary variety and complexity. It is open to 25-30 selected members of each entering class-students who are chosen on the basis of their strong academic qualifications and motivation, and who wish to make the study of cities an important part of their liberal arts education.

The distinguishing features of the Program include: 

• An interdisciplinary approach
• Compatibility with every major offered at Trinity
• Use of the city of Hartford as a multi-dimensional educational resource
• Special courses open only to students in the Program
• Hands-on involvement with urban issues and problems

Cities have played a central role in recorded history from ancient times to the present.  They have been centers of artistic and intellectual creativity, seats of political andmilitary power, engines of economic growth and innovation, focal points of technological invention and scientific discovery, and arenas for the interaction of diverse peoples and cultures. They have been, as well, places of hardship, oppression, and social injustice, for a striking paradox of urban life is that it often combines much of the best in human experience with some of the worst.

The Program views cities from a broad range of perspectives in the humanities and social sciences, drawing on insights from history, architectural history and urbanplanning, literary and cultural studies, economics, politics, and sociology, among other fields. While the primary emphasis is cities in Europe and the United States, attentionis also given to urbanization elsewhere, including the recent explosive growth of "mega-cities"  in the developing world.

Among the many challenging and controversial questions that students in the Program explore are:  Can there be civilization without cities?  What have been the driving forces behind the rise-and the decline-of cities in various places and historical periods?   What have been the benefits, and the costs, of urbanization? How have cities influenced, and been influenced by, industrialization, democratization, secularization, and the development of the nation-state? Why are many of today's cities, in the United States and elsewhere, beset by wrenching social, economic and political crises?  What can be done to resolve those crises? Have cities outlived their usefulness, as some critics claim, or will they adapt to changing circumstances and thus retain their central place in human affairs?

Cities Program students pursue answers to such questions through four special first-year courses, plus an elective and a final requirement in the sophomore year.

The Program takes advantage of Trinity's location by using Hartford as a site for the close-up study of urban issues and by drawing on its rich array of intellectual andcultural resources. Students are given numerous opportunities to supplement theirclassroom learning by getting personally involved with the complex social and economic problems of this city, which in many respects is a microcosm of urban America.  Thus, the Program attracts not only students interested in the academic study of cities but also those of an activist bent who wish directly to engage the manifold challenges of modern urban life.

The participating faculty members coordinate the courses (and other activities) to ensure curricular coherence and to help students integrate the diverse disciplines, materials, viewpoints, and experiences represented in the Program. The goal is for students not simply to take an assortment of courses on cities but to acquire a comprehensive,interdisciplinary understanding of this multi-faceted and complex subject.