In the lead up to the Spring 2025 semester, I brought together a group of students to found the Swarthmore Urbanists—a student club at Swarthmore College “dedicated to educating and advocating for socially sustainable urban environments.” The 2025-26 academic year marked the first year that the Urbanists was a fully-fledged chartered student organization, enabling us to plan activities with funds from the College. I’ve decided to review some of the many fun events the Urbanists hosted in the 2025-26 academic year, to showcase the coolest new club on Swarthmore’s campus.
This photo is from the Fall 2025 club fair! At the start of every semester, the College organizes a fair for all student organizations to promote club membership, particularly amongst first-year students. I love Club Fair because I get to see some of the wacky clubs that Swarthmore is known for and meet so many new students. As a new club, it was so gratifying to get so many sign-ups! The Urbanists, like most clubs at the College, is open to all students without any kind of membership fee or application process. The club culture at Swarthmore is generally laid-back, meaning that most student organizations are pretty flexible in terms of commitment.
The first outing that the Urbanists organized was a “South Philly Tour & Picnic”. The event was designed to orient first-year students to Philadelphia, highlighting some of the many ‘urbanist’ attractions that the city has to offer. We visited many sites, including Independence Hall, South Street, 9th Street Market, Washington Ave, and Philly AIDS Thrift, and discussed the architecture and contentious urban history of Philadelphia. We also had a yummy picnic in Washington Square! We had so much fun walking around and enjoying the dynamic city vibes for over 7 hours!! One of the greatest strengths of Swarthmore is its proximity to Philadelphia which provides so many social, academic, career, and personal opportunities that students can engage with. The College’s UPass Program provides (essentially) unlimited trips on the region’s public transportation network (SEPTA*), and a roughly hourly train connects Swarthmore to the City in under 40 minutes.
For Halloween, members of the Swarthmore Urbanists dressed up in urbanist-themed costumes (see above) and participated in a spooky-themed trivia night. It was a super chill general meeting as most of us were super tired from the week.
This picture is from when the Urbanists attended the Wharton-Weitzman Future of Cities Conference at the University of Pennsylvania. The conference featured interesting panelists and speakers including the former CEO of SEPTA (Leslie Richards), the treasurer of SEPTA (Erik Johanson), and the new Commissioner of the Taxi and Limousine Commission of New York (Midori Valdivia). My favorite event was a lecture delivered by an urban planner working on the East Side Coastal Resiliency project in New York City. The conference tickets were 40 USD per person, so I am super glad that the Urbanists budget covered the event for 9 students!
The Urbanists host weekly general meetings where we discuss urban news, play games, work on projects, and engage in other fun/educational activities. The picture above is from when we ‘issue mapped’ Swarthmore Borough and the surrounding areas, highlighting gaps in non-automobile transportation infrastructure. While the Swarthmore area is pretty walkable and well-connected by public transportation relative to most places in the United States, there are still many problems in its built environment that need to be addressed.
Every semester, the Urbanists conduct an on the ground assessment of the Swarthmore Borough’s pedestrian infrastructure, known as a ‘walk audit’ in urban planning circles. This picture was taken right after we returned from our walk audit where we observed everything from street lighting to sidewalk construction materials. I enjoy leading the walk audits because it really allows us to see how even ‘minuscule’ design choices can radically alter the built environment.
One of our last events of the academic year was a transit tour of the city led by the Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia. It was an informative tour by a native Philadelphian who had some super cool anecdotes of the city’s expansive public transportation network. If you are a transit nerd like me, Philadelphia is an amazing metropolis since it is one of only two regions in the country that has every major form of ground-based public transportation (buses, trolleybuses, streetcars/trolleys, light rail, subways, and regional rail). Something I learnt from the tour was that you can walk entirely underground from 8th Street to 18th Street through a series of pedestrian concourses! We wrapped up the tour with scrumptious dinner in Chinatown also funded by the Urbanists’ budget :).
These were only some of the many events the Swarthmore Urbanists hosted in the academic year, but I hope it gives you a glimpse of one of the coolest clubs on Swarthmore’s campus (I’m totally not biased or anything, right?).
