Urban and Regional Planning

Chair: Austin Troy
Office: CU Denver Building 330F
Telephone: 303-315-1000
Fax: 303-315-1050

Faculty

Associate Professors:
Jeremy Németh, PhD, Rutgers University
Austin Troy, PhD, University of California, Berkeley

Assistant Professors:
Carrie Makarewicz, PhD, University of California, Berkeley
Carolyn McAndrews, PhD, University of California, Berkeley
Andrew Rumbach, PhD, Cornell University

Instructors:
Ken Schroeppel, MURP, University of Colorado
Jennifer Steffel Johnson, PhD, University of Colorado

Additional information about faculty in this department is available on the college website.

Overview

The Master of Urban and Regional Planning Program at the University of Colorado Denver has evolved to become one of the strongest, most unique planning programs in the United States. We offer a very hands-on, real-world oriented program that uses Colorado as our classroom and engages students with top planning/design professionals and the community.

We believe that successful city building requires expertise, breadth, interdisciplinary understanding, and creativity. Our program looks beyond traditional professional silos and instead centers on issues at the forefront of planning practice. Our three Initiatives – Healthy Communities, Urban Revitalization, and Regional Sustainability – form the basis of our research, instruction, and community outreach.

We encourage all students to follow their passion and develop expertise in the areas that matter most to them. Thus, we offer a unique, self-directed curriculum that allows students to understand the breadth of the planning field while gaining the technical expertise demanded by the profession.

Our world-class faculty includes some of the most respected researchers in the planning field, and our award-winning planning practitioners bring a wealth of experience to the classroom. All of our faculty make teaching a top priority.

Our presence in a College of Architecture and Planning ensures that our approach to planning education has a strong connection to design, and our location in the heart of downtown Denver presents our students with endless opportunities to learn what it takes to create amazing cities.

Program Mission and Values

Our vision is to be a national leader in educating skilled, engaged planners and creating vibrant, sustainable communities.

Inspired by our setting in the downtown of a thriving urban center in the dynamic Rocky Mountain region, our mission is to:

Teach - Teach our students the knowledge, skills, and values they need to be confident, principled, and visionary planners, using Colorado as our classroom to engage students in real-world, experiential learning.
Advance - Advance the field of planning through insightful, relevant research that directly informs policy and improves our built, natural, and social environments.
Serve - Serve as a vital resource for communities and professionals, and help develop sustainable solutions to our region’s complex planning challenges.

Several core values inspire all the work we do:

Advocacy - We believe planners must be visionary in their work, politically engaged, and articulate proponents for positive change.
Collaboration - We believe planners must understand and value the principles and perspectives of allied disciplines that participate in planning and city building.
Engagement - we believe students should learn planning by interacting directly with professionals and the public to solve real-world planning challenges.
Interdependency - We believe cities are inextricably tied to each other and to their ecological, regional and global contexts.
Service - We believe our program should serve as a resource for planning professionals and the public by offering ideas, solutions, research, advocacy, and inspiration.
Sustainability - We believe planning must be based on the principles of economic viability, environmental resiliency, and social equity.
Urbanism - We believe in the potential of cities and towns to be the most efficient, equitable and inspiring forms of human settlement.

Our Faculty

The faculty of the Department of Planning and Design consists of a purposeful mix of full-time tenured/tenure-track faculty, full-time instructors, and a diverse group of part-time lecturers who keep one foot in the professional practice of planning and one in the classroom. The MURP program and its students benefit from the rich contributions of the scholarly research accomplished by our tenured/tenure-track faculty, and the practice-oriented instruction provided by our lecturers and instructors. To learn more about our MURP faculty members, please visit the college website.

Our Students

Our commitment to our students extends across many areas: providing them with exceptional instruction and research-backed knowledge about planning; inspiring them to achieve great things in their personal and professional lives; exposing them to planning professionals, real-world planning situations, and state-of-the-art learning resources; and helping them choose their best academic and career paths through advising and mentoring.

Curriculum

Program Features

Our passion for teaching students the knowledge, skills and values they will need to be confident, principled, and visionary planners is reflected in the five key features we’ve integrated across our program and curriculum:

Physical Planning and Design - We emphasize physical planning and design throughout our curriculum. Housed within the College of Architecture and Planning, we work closely with the College’s Architecture, Urban Design, Landscape Architecture, and Historic Preservation programs to provide our students access to an expanded design-focused education.
Experiential Learning and Engagement - Throughout the program we provide significant opportunities for students to gain hands-on planning experience and have direct interaction with Colorado’s planning professionals. We use Denver’s diverse urban landscape as a real-world classroom for students to experience and analyze the built, social, political, and economic environments.
International Learning Opportunities - We provide students the opportunity to study planning from an international perspective. By offering lecture courses that focus on global planning issues and studios that involve on-site coursework in other countries and collaborations with partner universities abroad, we help students expand their personal and educational worldview.
Innovative Planning Technologies - We integrate innovative planning technologies into many of our program’s courses and activities. We capitalize on the Denver region’s entrepreneurial spirit and tech-focused economy by providing access to state-of-the-art planning technologies and teaching students how these tools can support the planning process.
Self-Directed Curriculum - We offer our students the unique ability to craft an education suited to their career goals and personal interests. Students may choose any combination of elective courses, whether oriented towards one of our three Program Initiatives, a traditional specialization, or a generalist survey of the planning field.

Program Initiatives

We focus on teaching students how to address critical issues and complex problems facing cities and regions today. For planners to take the lead in the city-building process, they need to understand the breadth of their field and know how to work in cross-disciplinary teams. Therefore we have structured our whole program – research, curriculum, faculty and student efforts, etc.– around three issue areas, which we call Initiatives.

Our three Program Initiatives (Healthy Communities, Urban Revitalization, and Regional Sustainability) represent issues at the forefront of the planning profession today and are also prominent topics in Denver and Colorado.

Healthy Communities

The link between human health and the built environment has become a key factor in planning cities and regions. Colorado is known for its physically fit and active adult population, but our vulnerable populations face significant challenges such as childhood obesity, disconnected neighborhoods, and lack of access to healthy food. Colorado has become a national leader in finding ways to plan and design healthier environments, and the MURP program’s Healthy Communities Initiative is part of that effort. We work with partners at the local, state and federal levels, as well as the non-profit, educational and private sectors, to provide students comprehensive and interdisciplinary training in the tools, innovations and policies necessary for creating physically, socially, and economically healthy communities.

Urban Revitalization

After decades of suburbanization, segregated land uses, and automobile-dependent development, the U.S. is now experiencing a resurgence of traditional urbanism and a reorientation toward central cities. Nowhere else is that phenomenon more evident than in Denver, where infill and transit-oriented development, historic preservation, adaptive reuse, and multi-modal transport are transforming the urban landscape. The MURP program’s Urban Revitalization Initiative gives students opportunities to engage with local developers, planners, designers and policymakers to help revive and enhance established cities, retrofit the suburbs, and plan sustainable new developments.

Regional Sustainability

Climate change, environmental degradation, resource scarcity, and sprawling development present critical challenges to planners worldwide. In the Rocky Mountain West, the impacts are evident in habitat loss, wildfire risk, and conflicts over water and energy resources. The MURP program’s Regional Sustainability Initiative explores ways that Colorado and its neighbors can tackle these issues together. At the metropolitan level, Denver and its adjacent communities already serve as a model for regional planning and cooperation, exemplified by the visionary FasTracks transit program. Our Initiative draws on Denver’s success in regional land use, transportation, economic development and resource planning to help students understand how built and natural environments can co-exist more sustainably at various regional scales.

Program Requirements

The total number of credit hours required to earn the Master of Urban and Regional Planning degree is 54. To reach the 54 total credit hours needed, students must earn 36 credits by completing and passing the required core courses (with a minimum grade of B-). Students must earn an additional 18 credits by completing elective courses of their choice. Please note: The 54 total credits needed may be reduced for students who meet the requirements for advanced standing or who have transfer credits.

Advanced Standing

Students with previous urban planning education may qualify for advanced standing. Up to nine credits of course waivers may be granted when the prior coursework meets prescribed content, quality, and level expectations. To be awarded advanced standing, the student must complete a waiver request form and provide documentation of prior coursework. All waivers must be approved in writing by the Department Chair or Associate Chair.

Potential Specializations

We encourage students to view their planning education through a fresh perspective aimed at a planning goal or agenda, rather than a “job description.” However, we also recognize that some students may want their MURP degree to focus on a traditional specialization, such as Transportation Planning or Economic Development. To ensure all our students have the educational experience they are seeking, we provide exceptional coverage across many traditional specialization topics.

Advising

Given the self-directive nature of the MURP program, students are highly encouraged to seek advice on their curriculum path and career direction from an academic advisor. New students are assigned an initial faculty advisor from among the full-time MURP faculty, but are welcome to change advisors at any point or seek advice from multiple faculty members as they proceed through the program.

Students should work with their advisor to maintain and complete a MURP Program Planning Form. It is a useful tool for planning the student’s progress through the program and ensuring that all graduation requirements have been met. Planning forms are also available to help guide dual degree students. Dual degree students should have an advisor in each relevant department or college.

Independent Study

Students may pursue independent study projects, which are designed in coordination with a faculty advisor. Independent studies may be done individually, or with a small group of students. Students and their faculty advisor determine the specific content, goals, and performance expectations for the independent study project. With the advisor’s approval, students may register for URPL 6810 to earn three elective credits for their independent study project. Students may complete a maximum of two independent studies for credit during the MURP program.

Self-Directed Curriculum

Students have the ability to craft a MURP degree suited to their career goals and personal interests. Students may choose any combination of elective courses, whether oriented towards one of the three Program Initiatives (Healthy Communities, Urban Revitalization or Regional Sustainability), a traditional specialization such as “Transportation Planning” or “Community Development,” or a generalist survey of the planning field. Students are encouraged to complete the required core courses prior to taking electives. A total of 18 credit hours (six three-credit courses) of electives are needed for the MURP degree.

The MURP Student Handbook on the MURP website offers suggestions for matching elective courses to potential specializations to help students decide which electives to take. Ultimately, students may choose whichever combination of elective courses they desire.

Of course, the most helpful resource for assisting students in choosing their self-directed path through the MURP program is the planning faculty. Students should not hesitate to reach out to any faculty member for advice about which electives to take or any topic relating to the MURP program or careers in planning.

Dual Degrees

As part of encouraging among planners an appreciation for and a knowledge of the perspectives and practices of the other disciplines that participate in planning and city-building, we offer several dual degree opportunities, both with programs within the College of Architecture and Planning and with other units across the University of Colorado system. In every instance the total credit requirement of the Dual Degree is considerably less than would be needed if each degree were independently pursued. The degrees that may be combined with the Master of Urban and Regional Planning include:

Master of Architecture (MURP+MARCH)
Master of Landscape Architecture (MURP+MLA)
Master of Public Health (MURP+MPH)
Master of Public Administration (MURP+MPA)
Master of Business Administration (MURP+MBA)
Juris Doctorate (Law Degree) (MURP+JD-in collaboration with the CU-Boulder Law School)

Information about the dual degrees can be found on the College website.

Programs

Urban and Regional Planning MURP