Mission Statement

The Master of Urban Design Program at the University of Michigan is a one-year post-professional degree program that seeks to develop professionals who can engage in the totality of designing cities — including architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning — and serve as the critical, catalytic link across those and other disciplines. Balancing concerns for place, culture, economics, ecology, public policy, infrastructure, history, and theory, the Program capitalizes on the global experience of faculty and students, training its graduates to assume leadership roles in shaping urban environments across the world.

The Program’s objectives are to prepare urban designers who can:

• Analyze urbanism in any location, with appreciation for the nuances of place, culture, and ecology.
• Design cities based on this analysis and with concern for environmental sustainability, economics, policy, and social equity.
• Work collaboratively with urban planners, landscape architects, engineers, public officials, real-estate developers, the media and community groups and organizations.
• Communicate their ideas in clear and compelling ways — visually, orally, and in writing — as is demanded by the urban designer’s public role.