Learning from film
- The MUD studio experience
- Travel
- New York City
- Film
- Colleagues around the world
- Read Roy Strickland's article
in Places Journal, Volume 18,
No. 2, 2006 
In the Master of Urban Design Program, film plays a central role in learning how to observe, analyze, and design cities.
As part of the Intermediate Design Studio, students view an international array of films while diagramming the relationships between space and narrative, from Vienna's underground infrastructure as revealed in The Third Man to Manhattan apartment and office interiors as dissected by The Naked City. Lessons from film are then applied to the term's design project, for which students construct analytical narratives or storyboards for studio sites that in turn help establish narratives for projects. Project narratives play two important roles in design work: they help generate designs as they help communicate design intentions in a compelling and accessible manner to a wide audience, as is appropriate to the public-oriented discipline of urban design.
As part of the Intermediate Design Studio, students view an international array of films while diagramming the relationships between space and narrative, from Vienna's underground infrastructure as revealed in The Third Man to Manhattan apartment and office interiors as dissected by The Naked City. Lessons from film are then applied to the term's design project, for which students construct analytical narratives or storyboards for studio sites that in turn help establish narratives for projects. Project narratives play two important roles in design work: they help generate designs as they help communicate design intentions in a compelling and accessible manner to a wide audience, as is appropriate to the public-oriented discipline of urban design.
Master of Urban Design Filmography
- Boston: Good Will Hunting
- New York City: The Naked City
- Brooklyn: Do the Right Thing
- Washington, DC: All the President's Men
- Detroit: Eight Mile
- Chicago: Love Jones
- San Francisco: Vertigo
- Los Angeles: Crash
- New Orleans: Panic in the Streets
- Edge City: Office Space
- Medellin (Colombia): Our Lady of the Assassins
- London: Night and the City
- Paris: Breathless
- Berlin: Wings of Desire
- Vienna: The Third Man
- Rome: The Bicycle Thief
- Algiers: Battle for Algiers
- Bombay: Salaam Bombay
- Beijing: Beijing Bicycle
- Hong Kong: Chinese Box
- Tokyo: That Taxing Woman