City Choices: Course Reflection

CITC12 City Structures and City Choices: Course Reflection I took CITC12 as an elective for my Major in City Studies. As a student of City Studies and Public Policy with plans to be a city planner, I had a special interest in city governance and community development, a marriage between the two majors. I was excited at the prospect of continuing my education in public governance and social and community development. However, as soon as I opened that course syllabus my heart sank. A large component of my mark would be based on a group assignment and presentation. One of my biggest fears in school was group work, in fact I had dropped a course within the first week of learning I had to do a group assignment. This was only 2 semesters ago. Many

She told us that throughout our life we’d be thrown multiple curveballs and obstacle, group work being the most consistent one. However, one thing that stood out was the idea of a group contract that Prof. Flynn introduced us to. This group contract outlined the roles and responsibilities of group members, the consequences should one of us not “live up” to those responsibilities, and the method in which we’d communicate during the course of the assignment. In addition, I had counted on the fact that most of my group members would at least be in their third year of post-secondary by now and expected some form of maturity and cooperation compared to my high school

The one main “challenge” I can think of would be the meeting with our councillor. However, luckily, one of group members lived very close to City Hall and offered to attend and take notes during the meeting for all of us. The meeting and the specifics required by our councillor set the aims for our briefing book. We at first had trouble merging the requirements of the councillor with that of the briefing book, i.e. which section of the briefing book would we use to explain the different issues our councillor wanted to address. For example, our councillor wanted us to conduct case studies found in other cities. We had a difficult time figuring out which component of the briefing book it fell under, ultimately, we decided to give the case studies their own component in the book. In terms of our assignment’s “evolution”, we actually started the assignment relatively late (after Reading Week). However, we were able to make a schedule, all members would submit their researched components to me, and I would make the briefing book. We agreed to submit all information by the Friday, 3 days before the first draft was due (on March 12), however realistically we all submitted our information by the Sunday morning. But ultimately, we were able to compile all the information relatively quickly. If I’m being honest, I wasn’t completely satisfied with the briefing book, some of the components were much