Master of Urban Design

Program objective: Master of Urban Design students acquire the skills and expertise to tackle critical urban challenges. Students develop planning and design proposals that actively seek to transform urban conditions by making cities more equitable, sustainable and beautiful. Projects range in scale from the design of discrete physical interventions, to the restructuring of urban districts, to the reimagining of mega-regions. During the first semester, program participants engage in design projects aimed at improving local urban conditions in the New York metropolitan region, whereas the second semester is dedicated to inventing new urban design paradigms in international settings. The program focuses on innovative urban design and planning practice that is informed by in-depth local analysis and global understanding of large-scale forces at work in city-making and urbanization. Using new and emergent techniques, students learn to analyze and visualize both the physical and non-physical forces shaping urban conditions to design in a variety of urban contexts and scales, and to critically evaluate the social, economic and ecological impact of their own urban design proposals and interventions. Learning Outcomes: Over the past 10 years, Master of Urban Design studios have focused on the most pressing urban challenges of the time. Major research themes in the past five years have centered on planning, designing and rebuilding in the face of climate change, an increase in extreme weather events and sea-level rise. Master of Urban Design students have directly participated in the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development’s "Rebuild by Design" initiative. Studios have also addressed the challenges of changing demographics, such as the aging of the world’s population, the ethnic diversification of suburbs and socio-spatial exclusion in cities. The goal of the studios is to introduce students to the tools of urban design and planning. Studio members work at a variety of scales and use a variety of techniques, ranging from small-scale, community-based approaches that improve local conditions to large-scale strategic visions. By the completion of the program, participants have experience in urban analysis and visualization, stakeholder and community engagement, the development of small-scale urban interventions, master and legacy planning and strategic visioning. The intent is to provide new skills and perspectives to practitioners that enhance their ability to design comprehensively and systemically at the urban scale, and to use these abilities to improve design outcomes at the scale of buildings.