Focus Area
Global and Comparative Planning Focus Area

This focus area concentrates on urban environments experiencing rapid population growth and displacement, resource scarcity, frequent disasters, and extreme inequality. Students learn to critically analyze the design and implementation of planning and policy initiatives from a comparative and global perspective, examine the remarkable planning innovations that these dynamic situations engender, and gain tools and analytical lenses needed to: understand how historical geopolitics and globalization interconnects distant cities and regions; address the needs of marginalized populations in situations of systemic inequities; and collaborate with (or work for) social movements, non-governmental organizations, private- and public-sector agencies operating across local to national scales, foundations and research centers, and international institutions.

Coordinator: Lesli Hoey

Primary Courses

  • URP 523, Participatory Planning and Community Development
  • URP 524, Program Evaluation for Urban Planning
  • URP 552, Healthy Cities: Planning and Design
  • URP 570, Global and Comparative Planning
  • URP 571, Comparative Urban Policy
  • URP 572, Comparative Housing and Property Policy
  • URP 573, Infrastructure Planning in the United States and Developing Countries
  • URP 580, Metropolitan Structure

Secondary Courses

  • URP 521, Intermediate Geographic Information Systems
  • URP 585, Economic Development Planning Methods

Non-URP Courses

Many global and comparative courses exist in Political Science, Social Work, Public Health, School of the Environment and Sustainability and other fields, including regionally-focused courses listed through the International Institute. Here is a selected list:

  • PUBPOL 534, Economics of Developing Countries
  • PUBPOL 717, Social Activism, Democracy & Globalization: Perspective of the Global South
  • ANTHRCUL 625, Anthropological Approaches to Property & Property Rights
  • MO 512, Bargaining and Influence Skills: Negotiation Strategy in a Global Economy
  • LAW 626, Immigrant Justice Lab