Urban Planning and Community Development

The Urban Planning and Community Development (UPCD) MS degree program focuses on the multi-dimensional and interrelated issues facing the metropolitan areas of the commonwealth as well as the increasingly urbanized areas of the nation and the world. The program prepares students to become practitioners in the planning profession with essential technical, process, and communications skills.

What It Is

The Urban Planning and Community Development program brings together the expertise of faculty from several colleges within the university and builds upon decades of research and community engagement by the university’s institutes and centers, which collectively focus on the metropolitan area’s diverse population, governance, and its built and natural environments. In addition, the program takes advantage of partnerships with community-based organizations to promote economic development, affordable housing, and small business development, with a deliberate agenda to address social and environmental inequity and serve the needs and interests of underrepresented communities.

Who It’s For

The graduate degree in urban planning and community development is open to those with baccalaureate degrees in a wide range of fields, e.g., environmental sciences, political science, sociology, economics, public policy, architecture, and management. The program is structured to be convenient to working professionals.

What You’ll Learn

Students will gain an understanding of human settlements drawing from concepts and theories from social and environmental sciences; the spatial structure of urban and regional systems; economics of development; the legal framework of constitutional principles and rights; state and municipal law and regulations; the institutions and political processes associated with plans and planning; infrastructure; and public finance.