City & Regional Planning: Sustainable Transportation & Infrastructure

The Master of City Planning core curriculum encompasses the basic skills and knowledge required of all planners regardless of their specialization, and is a hallmark of our cutting-edge and practical approach to educating city planners. Students who complete the core will understand the legal and historical basis of city planning; they will know how to use a wide variety of population and economic data to understand local communities; and they will understand the form and arrangement of cities and metropolitan areas around the world. Most important, they will understand which planning approaches work best in which contexts and circumstances.

This concentration explores the roles of transportation and other capital infrastructure systems in shaping urban and metropolitan development patterns in the U.S. and around the world. It focuses foremost on urban highway, public transit, and non-motorized transportation systems and their connections to sustainable, livable and economically-productive development forms; and secondly on water, energy, and communications infrastructure. It covers initial planning and development topics (such as right-of-way and system planning issues), linkages to urban and economic development issues (such as those surrounding high-speed rail), and ongoing finance and management topics such as pricing, equity of access, and value creation. Students who complete the Sustainable Transportation & Infrastructure Planning concentration work for local and municipal governments, for state highway departments and metropolitan transit operators, for transportation and infrastructure planning consultants, for system developers and utilities, and for policy and planning organizations advocating more sustainable transportation and development choices.

Offline Recommendation

Penn strongly prefers that recommenders submit letters of recommendation online through the admissions system. If, however, your recommender is unable to submit an online recommendation, please follow these instructions:

1) Select the “Recommendation Form PDF Download” and download the form.
2) Complete the first section. Be sure to include the address of the appropriate admissions office — refer to the "Contact Graduate Admissions" list below. 
3) Print out the form and provide it to your recommender.

Please note:

• If you are applying to a program in Nursing, print out and provide your recommender with these special instructions for completing your letter of recommendation.
• If you are applying to a program in the School of Social Policy & Practice, print out and provide your recommender with these special instructions for completing your letter of recommendation.

4) Your recommender should send the form directly to the admissions office you designate, along with the letter of recommendation.