Winter 2025 Course on Urban Storytelling

MSW students, consider this Winter 2025 course for your Out-Of-Department Electives.

Urban Storytelling

URBDP 598 G, SLN 21914, 3 credits

Mondays & Wednesdays, 3:30 – 4:50pm, Gould 322

Instructor: Helen Pineo, hspineo@uw.edu

Short description: Examines the ways in which stories and storytelling function to shape urban futures through policy and the built environment. Uses theory and case studies to explore contemporary uses of urban storytelling to open possibilities and as forms of resistance. Surveys multiple methods for learning and sharing urban stories, underpinned by considerations of ethical storytelling. In Winter 2025, students will examine community stories in Redmond with our community-based partner Eastside for All. The course assignment is a project that will explore how these stories informed emerging urban policy.

Relevant fields: Urban planning and other built environment programs, political science, anthropology, gender studies, geography, sociology, Science, Technology and Society Studies, public health, English Literature, history, public policy, and others.

Prerequisites: None. This course is open to students without specific training in urban planning, health and wellbeing. Open to undergraduates upon agreement with instructor.

Learning objectives:

• Develop a theoretically-informed understanding of the role of narrative and storytelling in urban planning and policy-making.
• Connect cultural narratives to difficult urban issues (e.g. affordable housing supply and mental health) and inequities to propose new ways to frame solutions.
• Explore the social and political motivations for urban stories and narratives being amplified, ignored or silenced within specific places, examining the consequences when counter-narratives are surfaced.
• Understand the ethical dimensions and practices of gathering, synthesizing and sharing multiple (potentially conflicting) stories about a particular place.
• Evaluate the purpose and value of diverse modes and media of storytelling.

The online draft short syllabus is available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wdHNG5mGccokHhTpOBGdKnt4iIdvACqi/view?usp=sharing

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