Master of Urban and Regional Planning (M.U.R.P.)

University of California, Los Angeles

The professional urban planner works on the creation and management of the urban environment, including its physical, economic, and social elements. Housing, transportation, air and water quality, the preservation of historic communities, and the development of community-level economic and employment programs are some of the tasks undertaken by recent graduates of the Department of Urban Planning. Graduates have taken positions in local, state, and national governments, and increasingly with nonprofit and private companies whose products and services affect the urban environment. While most UCLA graduates find positions in the U.S., the program offers the opportunity to specialize in development planning abroad, including rural development, and many graduates have found positions in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

Areas of Study

Students are required to declare an area of concentration by the fall quarter of their second year. Areas of concentration are fields in which planners characteristically become engaged, professionally or through research. They are not meant to be mutually exclusive. Courses are clustered in the following six areas:

Community Economic Development and Housing. This concentration addresses the social and economic forces affecting communities. Within this area, students can choose one of two streams: housing policies and development, or community economic development. Both streams highlight linkages to social, economic, and spatial justice; inequality; built form/physical environment; and applied research.

Design and Development. This concentration is intended to teach students how public and private market forces drive design and development of the built environment and how we can build in a smarter more sustainable way that is respectful of varying cultural needs and practices. This area of concentration equips urban planners aspiring to enter the public sector with tools to craft rules and regulations that meet public goals, and trains planners who wish to work for the private or nonprofit development sectors in the skills needed to work with neighbors, community and the public sector in the entitlement and development of complex projects.

Environmental Analysis and Policy. The natural environment is both the context within which all human activities take place and a social product of those activities. Environmental planning begins with analysis of the physical, biotic, socio-economic and cultural context in which environmental conflicts occur. An array of analytic tools ranging from cultural to socio-economic and ecological approaches is then applied to specific questions. Some of these are locality specific, but many also involve larger scale regional process and social movements. This multidisciplinary concentration engages resources within the program and the University to address the urgent questions inherent in environment and development. The program encourages broad training and use of the resources of many disciplines.

Regional and International Development. This concentration concerns the interrelated aspects of area development in both developed and developing countries. The perspective on questions of area development is that of political economy and spatial analysis. Industrialization, urbanization, and rural development are major focal points of interest. Within this area, students are expected to choose an emphasis on either developing or advanced economies.

Transportation Policy and Planning. This concentration emphasizes developing a broad, multi-faceted understanding of the historical, spatial, economic, social and environmental factors affecting transportation issues. While the program emphasizes domestic urban transportation policy, all aspects of transportation policy are covered.