Urban Planning and Policy

Unique Features

• Graduate students may also participate in Northeastern’s signature cooperative education experience program. Cooperative education is central to both the Northeastern experience and to the College of Social Sciences and Humanities experiential liberal arts framework. Northeastern’s signature co-op ecosystem provides qualified graduate students with six-month work experiences in businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies in Boston and across the United States. Graduate students take their work from campus learning spaces, apply their knowledge outside of the classroom, and then bring knowledge and skills gained in community learning spaces back to our campus learning spaces during the co-curricular experiential integration course.
• Students in the MUPP program have opportunities to gain experience in the application of their knowledge and skills via internships, class projects, and a capstone research report. They graduate prepared for careers in state and local government, federal agencies, community development corporations and other nonprofit organizations, research institutes, and as private-sector planning consultants.
• Students can add a graduate certificate to their degree to demonstrate specialized training in the nonprofit sector, urban studies, urban analytics, or public policy analysis. Courses taken to complete a certificate also count as MUPP elective credits. Students with an interest in a specific field may work with their academic advisor to identify elective courses relevant to their area of interest.

MUPP Focus Areas

1. Urban Design and Physical Planning: The Urban Design and Physical Planning specialization provides students with a foundation in principles and practices involved in designing vibrant, accessible, and sustainable urban spaces. Students learn theories of urban design and techniques and software of design representation. They can choose from three subtracks within the specialization: Urban Design and Real Estate, Physical Planning and Design for Sustainable Urbanism, and Urban Experience Design. The Urban Design and Real Estate subtrack provides students skills in real estate finance and practice to prepare them to work with designers, communities, real estate professionals, government agencies, and other stakeholders to create great urban places. The subtrack in Physical Planning and Design for Sustainable Urbanism develops skills to realize ecologically sustainable urban development through the application of principles of environmental and urban design in the planning and policy process. Students in the subtrack in Urban Experience Design learn methods for analyzing and visualizing the city as a data environment and designing for human interaction within urban systems.


2. Urban Analytics: The Urban Analytics focus area prepares students for careers analyzing data to solve urban problems. Students develop cutting-edge skills in big data analysis, data visualization, and geographic information aystems, and learn the theoretical and practical skills to analyze cities as a system of systems. Electives allow students to gain a deeper understanding of the application of data analytics techniques in the areas of environmental policy and planning, transportation and land use planning, and climate change adaptation and mitigation, among others.


3. Urban Sustainability and Resilience: The Urban Sustainability and Resilience specialization is intended for students interested in working on critical issues of climate change adaptation and mitigation, environmental sustainability, and disaster planning facing cities. The curriculum provides a theoretical foundation in the interaction between the built environment of cities and ecological systems, and in methods like dynamic modeling and geographic information systems that are used to analyze these issues. Electives allow students to explore both the policy and physical planning and urban design dimensions of issues of sustainability and resilience.


4. Urban Development Policy and Planning: The Urban Development Policy and Planning specialization area prepares students for careers working on issues of housing, economic development, and community development facing cities. The coursework allows students to focus their studies on specific topics. For example, students interested in housing can choose coursework that provides a strong background in housing policy and real estate finance and practice, while students interested in community development might choose coursework on community development, immigration policy, or nonprofit management.