Philadelphia, Garden City:
An environmental history

The story of Philadelphia begins with a plague. In the winter of 1665, the city of London was struck down with an outbreak of the bacterium Yersinia pestis — the Black Death. Hosted by fleas carried by rats across its refuse-choked streets and sewers, it caused a horrific and typically fatal disease in its human victims. Tens of thousands died. The next year, a wildfire precipitated by overcrowding and antiquated planning destroyed large swaths of the city. Commerce dragged to a standstill.

These cascading urban traumas left a particular impression on a twenty-one-year-old British Quaker named William Penn. Years later, now the governor and chartered proprietor of the vast Pennsylvania colony, his designs for Philadelphia imagined a “green country town which will never be burnt and always be wholesome.”

In this course, we will look back at the promise of Philadelphia as a “garden city” through the lens of its present struggles with food insecurity, lethal heat islands, an opioid crisis, and green gentrification.

Readings and discussions of archival materials, public planning reports, and environmental justice literature will prepare us for biweekly site visits, hands-on activities, and direct engagement with the people working to reconcile this promise in their everyday lives.

Philadelphia, Garden City is a side-by-side community based learning course sponsored by the Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University. It takes place on Fridays from 2:00 –  4:50 PM from April 3rd to June 5th, 2026. In this course, undergraduate students and community members learn together as equal participants, exploring the environmental history of Philadelphia originating with the first map of the city, commissioned by William Penn in 1683.

Through alternating site visits and classroom-based discussions at the Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships (3509 Spring Garden St.), students will learn about the ways that this founding American document created a template for colonialist ecological and cultural erasure that persists to this day.

At the same time, students will be introduced to some of the people working to reconcile Penn's vision for a "green country town" with their own dreams for a more just and liveable city. Together we will design a final project to support the work of our partner organizations.

This course is free and open to the public. Drexel students must register for HNRS 430 (CRN 34508) to receive course credit.

The application deadline is Friday, March 6th, 2026. Space is limited.