UC Berkeley’s Department of City and Regional Development (DCRP) faces a number of challenges in the coming years:

• to maintain excellent educational programs and attract the best students, while also trimming what we do in response to university-wide budget cuts,
   
• to pursue exciting new paths of inquiry, while also sustaining our traditional focus on the core concerns of the planning field,
   
• to create top-notch academic programs, while also maintaining our emphasis on professional education,
   
• to maintain the top standing of our Masters program during transition years as senior faculty retire and new junior faculty are brought on-board,
   
• to maintain a diversity of thought, interest, experience, and intellectual and research approaches among faculty and students, while not spreading ourselves too thinly or developing internal pockets of isolation, and
   
• to grow the urban studies undergraduate major, while also not overburdening faculty or staff, or compromising our graduate programs.
   

For these reasons, DCRP several years ago (2004) prepared a Draft Strategic Plan to guide our future directions and initiatives. We worked with that plan for several years, but it became clear that more refinement of the plan was necessary in order to prioritize our goals and efforts.

In Spring, 2007 Chair Robert Cervero appointed a Strategic Plan Update Committee, charged with updating the earlier plan and creating a new 5-year Strategic Plan. Faculty Retreats were held in the Spring of 2006 and 2007 to discuss intellectual challenges, possible curriculum changes, faculty hiring priorities, and other matters related to the department’s future. These discussions took place on the heels of a Planning Accreditation Board (PAB) review of the MCP program in 2004 and an External Review of the department (initiated by the office of the Vice Provost of Academic Planning) during 2005-2006.

Read the DCRP 2007 Strategic Plan [pdf].