The gateway course for students enrolled in the MS in professional studies degree program. Course provides students with opportunities to interact about controversial issues while discovering foundational knowledge about interdisciplinary history, theory, along with applied problem-solving, research methods and professional ethics. Students use this course as a means of designing and receiving approval for individualized plans of study. (Department permission required). Students should consult their adviser before registering.

The course provides students with a comparative and analytical view of how different departments within a city are managed and work together. Students will learn about the role of city departments like security and safety, transportation, energy, water, sanitation and waste, how they work together today, and how they will need to interact in a smart city environment. This course will compare and contrast the collaborative nature of city government departments in various regions, including Europe, Asia, India, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas, and students will analyze how technology can help build a more collaborative structure between these departments in cities of the future. Students will develop a foundational understanding of how urban departments are managed and will be managed in the future.

In the evolution of cities, the use of technology in cities creates value. With the rise of the smart city and the use of IoT instrumentation (i.e. network-connected devices), robots, AI and so on, how do cities purporting to be “smart” evaluate the investment that goes into these new technologies and where do they raise the finances necessary to implement it? What do we know about the economics of the “smart city”? This course provides students the opportunity to understand how the use of technology supports OPEX (operating expenditures) and CAPEX (capital expenditures) optimization in urban projects. Students will understand where the funding to support this implementation comes from – internal city finances, public-private partnerships, or external sources. With recent data, this course describes the financial feasibility of numerous urban projects from buildings, energy, telecommunications, transportation, water and wastewater, public safety security, and health and human services. The cost savings in projects due to integration of systems, IoT instrumentation, connectivity, interoperability, data management, computing resources and analytics will also be examined.