While urban settlements have been an integral part of human life for millennia, cities today are arguably at the heart of survival on, and of, this planet. More than half of the world's population now lives in cities, and urban centers present some of the greatest social and environmental challenges of their time. Though students may study in or travel through cities while learning abroad, urban settings typically provide the scenery rather than the focus for study abroad programs. The International Honors Program (IHP), in contrast, studies the urban context itself and embraces the consequential role of cities in the world as the thematic heart of the authors' study abroad program, Cities in the 21st Century. In this article, the authors discuss the content and the learning opportunities that are available when the city is the classroom. They describe the current design of the program and methods that they use, and suggest how the intercultural context and interdisciplinary nature of this experience can be adapted to other programs in international education.