Graduate
Sample Schedule
The M.U.D. Program immerses students in a curriculum integrating design, history, theory, and practice in the following sequence:
| Summer Half-Term | Credit Hours |
|---|---|
| Urban Design Studio I (including related seminar) | 9 |
| Fall Full Term | Credit Hours |
|---|---|
| Urban Design Studio II | 6 |
| Theories of Urban Design | 3 |
| History of Urban Form | 3 |
| Selective or Elective | 3 |
| Winter Full Term | Credit Hours |
|---|---|
| Urban Design Studio III | 6 |
| Methodologies of Urban Design | 3 |
| History of Urban Form | 3 |
| Selective or Elective | 3 |
| Spring Half-Term (optional) |
Credit Hours |
|---|---|
| International Study (may replace Elective) | 3 |
Students are strongly encouraged to enroll in the spring half term, because international study, especially in a global city, is becoming essential to the understanding of 21st-century urbanism. Students may also take additional classes for which they are qualified during any term in the program, including courses in architecture, planning, landscape architecture (at the School of Natural Resources and Environment), and other departments within the university.
Students holding M.U.P. degrees, at the discretion of the M.U.D. Admissions Committee, may be required to take an additional design or design skills course during the spring term before the program's first summer term or during the summer term.
According to University of Michigan regulations, students in the program are required to maintain a cumulative grade point average of B to maintain their academic standing. Grade point averages below B during any term result in academic probation. If a student does not raise his or her program cumulative average above B before graduation, he or she will be denied a degree.
Course Descriptions
UD712/UD739 | Foundation Studio and Seminar Summer Term
The Urban Design Foundation Studio and Seminar is an intense workshop intended to introduce the necessary skills and base of knowledge to carry you through your studies in the M.U.D. Program.
UD722 | Master of Urban Design Intermediate Studio
Fall Term
This studio combines analysis and observation of urban morphology and culture with urban design projects set in high-density cities either in the United States or abroad. Its goals are to equip participants with the skills to see and interpret urbanism as they develop processes for designing cities that reflect concern for both physical form and the human activity that form contains. The studio also seeks to enable designers to communicate their ideas through graphic and verbal means understandable and compelling to the project stakeholders, architects, developers, and public agencies that will determine the outcomes of the urban design process.
URP719 | Theories of Urban Design Fall Term
“Each generation writes its own biography in the cities it creates,”
Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities
The purpose of this seminar is to critically evaluate the concepts and practices of urban design. In the spirit of Lewis Mumford's quote, it will explore the biographies that past generations have written about the design of their cities and discuss the biographies that this generation, faced with many new challenges, will create. Key to interpreting urban 'biographies' is an understanding of how different design philosophies shape form, configuration, and the distribution of uses. Readings are organized around nine themes:
- Signature moments and movements in the history of urban design and city-making
- Criticisms of modern planning and design
- Theoretical concepts of place
- Place-making practices
- Typology and Morphology in Urban Design
- Physical form- implications and externalities
- Physical elements of urban design
- Urban Design Practice
- The Future is Now
UD732 | Master of Urban Design Final Studio Winter Term
The Master of Urban Design Final Studio focuses on one or two projects related to themes such as the post-industrial city, suburban sprawl, brown-field development, green-field development, the inner suburb, and the "Edge City" in the United States or abroad. The studio is coordinated with the seminar, Methodologies in Urban Design, where research subjects and term products are related to the studio's projects. As a result, students complete the studio with the capacity both to design projects and create the implementation strategies and reports to support their designs. Another of the studio's important features is the Charles Moore Visiting Professor, a leading urban designer who joins the M.U.D. faculty during the winter term for studio desk crits and reviews.
UD723 | Methodologies of Urban Design Winter Term
This seminar will provide a review of urban design methodologies, from the 19th Century through the present, by focusing on one of the world’s great laboratories of city design, New York, and by relating that city’s experience to that of other major cities around the world.
UD729 | Practices of Urban Design Winter Term
This course exposes the students to urban design as it is practiced in the United States, including the practical constraints and collaborations, and its interdisciplinary nature. There are many ways in which urban design is practiced; there are also many factors typically outside of designers’ control that ultimately affect the design of our environment. Students will be encouraged to expand the definition of urban design and the role of the urban designer, and to explore the question: “What can urban design be?”
