This course introduces students to the inter-disciplinary field of public affairs. The course explores why and how public polices form and develop as well as change, how public policy function, and related to everyday life in the city, the key problems confronting cities and how public policy address such challenges. A main focus of this course is the apparent paradox of public policy in the city – cities are the centres of vibrant lives, creativity, wealth accumulation, incubators of new cultures, origins of political reforms etc, yet at the same time, many cities also exhibit high concentrations of crime, poverty and inequality. There is the utopian and dystopian city, the cohesive and conflictual city. The course will consider how such contradictions are examined and explained by different theoretical approaches with theories being drawn from political science, public management, urban studies, economics, sociology, geography, anthropology etc. Examples from Hong Kong, China and other Asian countries as well as from Europe and the United States will be drawn upon as illustrations.