URBN PL 263Waste, Environment, and Society
Urban Planning · 4 units · Graduate courses (200-299)
Each year the world creates over two billion tons of trash, generating a complex planning and policy problem that has myriad impacts on urban life. Interdisciplinary study of garbage, and its relationship to environmental problems, labor, land and planning, and public health. Exploration of the environmental and social impacts of modern industry, capitalism and consumerism, and economic growth through the study of waste production and management. Examination of the social, cultural, political, and ethical issues associated with waste production, and the diverse institutions created to manage waste. Examination of topics such as plastics, recycling e-waste, waste commodity trading, and the relationship between waste and climate change. Exploration of environmental justice issues of uneven toxic exposure from waste based on race and class, as well as the international waste commodity trade’s increasingly common practice of routing the Global North’s garbage to Global South countries.
Letter grading.
When it runs
- Winter 2026
Scheduled, not typical — from UCLA’s Schedule of Classes, which publishes Fall 2025 through Spring 2027 and nothing before it.
Requisites
UCLA lists no requisites for this course.
Requires
Everything that has to come before this course, not just the courses named in the requisite above.
Nothing — this is an entry point.
Unlocks
What this course is a requisite for, and what those courses lead to in turn.
No course in the catalog lists this as a requisite.