| MCP Concentrations and Fields |
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Faculty Advisors: Jason Corburn, Elizabeth Deakin, Judith Innes, Elizabeth Macdonald, John Radke, Jennifer Wolch (on leave as dean of UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design) The environmental planning and policy concentration is designed to give MCP students a broad knowledge of the relationship between the built environment and the natural environment, as well as specific technical skills that can be applied professionally to solve environmental problems. Environmental issues affect every aspect of planning, so it is necessary to have an understanding of history, theory, institutions, economics, law, quantitative and qualitative methods, urban design, and natural factors. The program is particularly concerned with the relationship between human settlements and the natural environment. Students are encouraged to consider how negative environmental impacts can be mitigated through the development of alternative approaches to urban settlement patterns, urban design, and infrastructure systems. Both physical planning and non-spatial policy affect environmental planning and policy. A three-year concurrent degree program in environmental planning and policy is available with the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning. Students who complete this program will receive both MCP and MLA degrees.
Faculty Advisors: Nezar AlSayyad, Teresa Caldeira, Karen Chapple, Karen Christensen, Jason Corburn, Malo Hutson, Judith Innes, Ananya Roy, Jennifer Wolch (on leave as dean of UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design) Housing is probably planning’s oldest sub-field. In one form or another, planners have been involved in framing housing policies, creating housing plans, and developing publicly-funded housing projects for more than one hundred years. Housing planners work at all levels: at the national level drafting and administering housing policies; at the local level developing and implementing housing programs and plans; as community, non-profit, and for-profit developers of affordable housing; and as advocates for new types of housing and different housing ownership forms. Community development, as currently practiced in the U.S., grew out of frustrations with urban renewal and anti-poverty efforts of the 1950s and 1960s. In response to the failures of prior top-down policies and programs, the community development field emerged as a way of mobilizing communities to play a larger role in affecting their futures. Today, community developers work in the public sector, the private sector, and the non-profit sector. They help to develop the skills, capacities, and assets of all segments of society. Of particular concern are disadvantaged communities and the unequal access to opportunities that people of such communities are faced with in their daily lives. In the past twenty years, the field of economic development has blossomed at the local and community level for several reasons. First, local governments have increasingly experienced fiscal stress, leading to new entrepreneurial approaches to attracting and retaining business and a skilled workforce. Second, the devolution of most social programs from the federal to the state/local level, along with the decreased funding for the safety net, has led cities to focus increasingly on social equity in their economic development programs. Finally, the field of community economic development has come of age, offering an increasing number of best practices in developing assets and improving employability for disadvantaged community residents. Economic development specialists work not only in local government, but also at business and economics consulting firms and community-based organizations.
Faculty Advisors: Robert Cervero, Jason Corburn, Elizabeth Deakin, Michael Dear, David Dowall, Judith Innes, Michael Southworth, Paul Waddell Land use planning is the heart of the profession of city and regional planning. Land use planning is tied to transportation and to housing, to urban design, and to environmental planning. Land use planners work with regional and metropolitan planners, with economic developers, and with developers of private projects. They work in towns, cities, counties, special districts, and states. They work in the private sector as planning consultants and as land planners. Land use planning, in short, is the “glue” that holds the field together. The practice of land use planning is drawn from three traditions. The first is the tradition of the general plan: the idea of a constitution—put to map form—for local residents and their governments. The second is that of regulating local land uses to prevent negative spillovers. This tradition has grown from Euclidean zoning and the principle of separating incompatible uses through subdivision controls, to modern times and the California Environmental Quality Act. The third tradition is more normative: it is based on the idea that good cities and good neighborhoods must be carefully thought out, planned, and designed.
Faculty Advisors: Robert Cervero, Elizabeth Deakin, David Dowall, Michael Southworth, Paul Waddell The Transportation Concentration focuses on planning for urban transportation systems as well as the interaction between transportation and built, natural, and social environments. The concentration imparts the necessary knowledge and skills for rigorously analyzing contemporary transportation problems as well as a policy framework for probing the broader social, economic, and environmental implications of alternative choices. Contemporary topics covered in the transportation planning curriculum include: impacts of transit and highways on urban form and economic development; impacts of transit-oriented development and new urbanism designs on travel behavior; sustainable transport investments; highway and transit finance; congestion pricing; social and environmental justice; jobs-housing balance and regional mobility; streets and pedestrian-oriented designs; transportation planning in the developing world; and comparative international transportation policies. As concerns heighten over regional mobility, air quality, global climate change, energy, and equality of access, it is increasingly important that transportation planners apply a multi-disciplinary approach to the field. Accordingly, students in the transportation concentration are encouraged to augment the department’s transportation course offerings by designing a study program, in consultation with their advisor, that involves course work in other fields and departments. Students in the Transportation Policy and Planning Concentration have the option to pursue the concurrent degree program in transportation planning and engineering. This option confers both M.C.P. and M.S. degrees upon students who complete 60 units of course work (normally over five semesters) that satisfy both city planning and transportation engineering degree requirements. For further information about the concurrent degree requirements, contact Professors Robert Cervero at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or Elizabeth Deakin at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Faculty Advisors: Nezar AlSayyad, Peter Bosselmann, Elizabeth Macdonald, Michael Southworth Urban designers are concerned with how communities look, how they feel, and how they work for the people who use them. Urban design is the art of shaping urban environments over time and giving form to neighborhoods and cities, as well as creating environments that are educative and just. It is concerned with creating alternatives for the form, use, and management of the large-scale urban environment and draws upon city planning, architecture, landscape architecture, and the social sciences for its theory and methods. “Design” is a key, operative word: urban designers design urban physical environments. Work ranges in scale from small public spaces or streets to neighborhoods, city-wide systems, or whole regions. Because urban designers work for the public in one way or another, they must have an understanding of the physical-form implications of social, legal, and economic policies. Students concentrating in urban design frequently have some design background, typically in architecture, landscape architecture, environmental design, or urban planning with a design emphasis, but a design background is not required. Graduates in urban design work with public agencies, largely at the local government scale but also with institutions of governments at larger scales whose responsibilities include design issues. They work as well with private architectural, landscape, city planning, and community development firms whose clients are both public and private. A three-year concurrent degree program in urban design is available with the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning. Students who complete this program will receive both MCP and MLA degrees.
Faculty Advisors: John Radke, Paul Waddell GIS is more than pretty maps. It also includes remarkably powerful tools for spatial analysis and modeling, and for remote sensing. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are today widely applied in planning used for land use and growth management, environmental assessment, and fiscal analysis. Regional and international planners use GIS to plan infrastructure and coordinate urban development policies. Transportation planners use GIS for logistics planning, travel demand modeling and projections, and simulation. Environmental planners use GIS for long-term ecosystem planning as well as to identify critical environmental resources. Urban designers increasingly are using GIS and related technologies to look at site plans in 3-D view.
Faculty Advisors: Nezar AlSayyad, Teresa Caldeira, Robert Cervero, Michael Dear, David Dowall, Ananya Roy, AnnaLee Saxenian (on leave as dean of UC Berkeley’s School of Information) The International and Comparative Planning field provides grounded knowledge of international development planning and key international actors. It establishes a rigorous theoretical framework for studying the political economy of global change at multiple scales ranging from the urban neighborhood to supra-national institutions. To this end, it teaches transnational and comparative methodologies of analysis that are relevant to all sectors of planning.
Faculty Advisors: Nezar AlSayyad, Peter Bosselmann, Karen Chapple, Jason Corburn, Elizabeth Deakin, Michael Dear, David Dowall, Judith Innes, Ananya Roy, AnnaLee Saxenian (on leave as dean of UC Berkeley’s School of Information), Paul Waddell, Jennifer Wolch (on leave as dean of UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design) The Metropolitan/Regional Planning field examines institutions, governance, economic development and metropolitan form at metropolitan and regional scales. It provides a theoretical framework that focuses on the connections across substantive fields — such as transportation and economic development or housing and natural resource protection — and thus prepares students to work across sectors, scales, and boundaries. Because new governance processes require planners to work with a variety of methodologies, this field offers different toolkits to understand metropolitan dynamics. Students are required to take one of the two core courses and then can choose two electives. The field thus offers a choice between professional and academic tracks. |