Accompanying the International City Folio, students will prepare a minimum 3,000 word essay demonstrating an understanding of how their assigned city has been shaped. The essay must not simply present a chronological history of the development of the city, but rather, a systematic explanation of what produced its current form. These are not the kind of issues that are addressed in a typical history book. Identifying the crucial questions will demand relentless curiosity in the examination of the current form of the city, and answering them will require research beyond the published material available on the city, and/or considerable speculation.