The Master of Urban Design degree expands on traditional architectural, landscape architecture and planning education with an understanding of the processes of urban development, and with the skills required to the physical shaping of urban places. The degree seeks to develop knowledgeable specialists who possess significant ability to identify opportunities in the urban environment an the sensibility to provide for design solutions to the most complex problems encountered.
Faculty work in close collaboration with students through rigorous curricula focused on the application of research in the design of layered and mutually reinforcing systems and public spaces.
Projects range from neighborhood plans to large scale urban and regional initiatives engaging cultural and environmental concerns. Project locations are often in Cleveland and similar regional cities, but they address far-reaching global concerns. Students can engage in applied research in the re-design of “Cities Growing Smaller,†systemic approaches to the development of urban environments, considerations of place and identity and the place-making potential of infrastructure. Further directions include the design of cities and neighborhoods that promote physical and mental health, studies of sustainable infrastructures that support sustainable ecological systems, the adaptation of traditional models of urbanism to changing conditions, and the future of urban economies as it relates to physical place-making.