The Department of Urban Planning and Design is home to both professions, offering a first professional degree in urban planning and a post-professional degree in urban design. The department’s international faculty of scholars and practitioners addresses the diverse set of issues presented by the built environment from multiple points of view and disciplinary backgrounds. The department’s small overall size of 100 students, coupled with a pedagogically innovative mixture of studios, lecture classes, seminars, and independent study, guarantee an intimate educational atmosphere in which students thrive and learn.

The accredited two-year Master in Urban Planning degree program focuses on planning for the development, preservation, and enhancement of the built environment. Students are taught how to understand, analyze, and influence the variety of forces—social, economic, cultural, legal, political, ecological, aesthetic, and other forces—shaping the built environment. The two-year Master of Architecture in Urban Design and Master of Landscape Architecture in Urban Design degree programs enable architects and landscape architects to address the larger scale of urban problems through formal techniques and application of knowledge from complementary areas of expertise such as real estate, law, and the history of urbanism.