City & Regional Planning Concentrations
Students must complete a minimum of six courses in order to achieve a concentration. The concentration must include all listed required courses, one of the listed studio courses, one of the listed analytical courses, and electives (which can include additional studios or analytical courses as electives).
Click on a concentration to see more information.
Energy, Environment, and Sustainability
This concentration centers on planning issues related to the sustainable development and optimal management of our natural resources, and in particular, problems associated with the sustainable interaction of built and natural environment in ways that preserve or restore the natural environment and improve the quality of life in cities and other developing areas. This includes policies to reduce urban sprawl, to encourage land conservation, and to reduce the impact from pollution and hazardous wastes. It also deals with techniques to assess environmental impacts, to derive the carrying capacity of land, and to model environmental systems in cities and regions.
Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing
Students in this concentration focus on techniques for using Geographic Information Systems to address a variety of planning, environmental, and engineering problems.
Housing, Real Estate and Neighborhoods
Numerous social and economic issues have a housing and neighborhood dimension, including racial segregation, poverty, unemployment, lack of services, neighborhood decline and gentrification, and lack of access to mortgage finance. The concentration acquaints students with these problems and a broad range of planning tools operating on housing and real estate markets such as zoning, code design and enforcement, revitalization and preservation policies, public housing, and rent vouchers. It also deals with the role of the many actors in the real estate market, such as the construction and finance sector, municipal, state and federal government, real estate agents and developers, the non-profit sector, and the courts and enforcement agencies among others.
International Development
This concentration focuses on issues typical of low income countries, as they relate to infrastructure and housing policies, urban and regional development, and poverty alleviation with a focus on the legal, institutional and regulatory enabling framework for development.
Physical Planning and Urban Design
This concentration centers on the relation between physical characteristics of the environment, characteristics of the occupant and human perception, cognition, evaluation and behavior. It encompasses the study of theories, methods and applications of psychological, social, cultural, and political factors that shape urban form. It prepares students to apply this knowledge to practical issues encountered in professional urban design and physical planning practice, both in the private and public sector.
Planning Policy and Process
This concentration centers on the methodology of planning, including methods of decision making, planning institutions, and the legal and regulatory framework common to all types of urban and regional planning.
Transportation
The transportation concentration centers on the movement of people around an urban area, and questions arising from that movement, such as choice of transportation modes, traffic congestion, air pollution, and the costs of providing both transportation modes and the infrastructure that supports them. (It is also possible to study urban goods movement).
Urban and Regional Economics
The concentration uses an Economics-based approach to analyze issues related to urban and regional spatial organization, economic growth and development, sector policies and project design.