Master of City Planning
The Master of City Planning degree requires completion of 19 course units, including course requirements from the core curriculum and one of four concentration areas. In addition, all students must complete a non-credit planning internship between the first and second years of study.
Prerequisites
Entering MCP students are required to have previously taken a course in descriptive and inferential statistics, and to have a working knowledge of spreadsheet analysis and digital graphics programs. Students who lack knowledge in these areas or just want to brush-up are encouraged to attend PennPlanning's two-week "bootcamp" program just prior to the start of the fall semester.
The MCP Core Curriculum
The nine-course MCP core curriculum encompasses the basic skills and knowledge required of all planners regardless of their specialization, and is a hallmark of PennPlanning's cutting-edge and practical approach to educating city planners. Students who complete the core will understand the legal and historical basis of city planning; they will know how to use a wide variety of population and economic data to understand local communities; and they will understand the form and arrangement of cities and metropolitan areas around the world. Most important, they will understand which planning approaches work best in which contexts and circumstances.
The core includes two hands-on opportunities for students to engage real planning problems in real communities for real clients. The first of these, CPLN 600 Workshop (Fall), offered to first-year students in cooperation with the renowned planning firm of Wallace, Roberts & Todd, and is organized around producing a community plan for a Philadelphia-area city, town, or neighborhood. CPLN 700 Planning Studio (Spring), offered to second-year students, centers on a more advanced and specific planning challenge. It gives students the opportunity to scope out a planning problem for themselves, design the appropriate planning process, and then, pursue that process to its conclusion. Studio topics vary year to year, but at least one studio usually has an international or comparative focus.
Required Core Courses*
Following are the core requirements for students entering in Fall 2010:
*All City Planning classes have been renumbered. The classes below reflect the new system.
YEAR 1 Fall
- CPLN 500 Introduction to City Planning: Past, Present, and Future
- CPLN 501 Quantitative Planning Methods
- CPLN 502 Urban Economics
YEAR 1 Spring
- CPLN 600 Workshop
- CPLN 509 Law and Urban Development
YEAR 2 Fall
- CPLN 510 Urban and Planning Theory
YEAR 2 Spring
- CPLN 700 Planning Studio
Students can choose to take the following core requirements whenever they best fit their schedule:
Spatial Analysis Requirement
- CPLN 503 Modeling Geographic Objects (Fall) or
- CPLN 504 Site Planning (Fall)
Cross Cutting Methods Requirement
- CPLN 505 Planning by Numbers (Spring)
- CPLN 506 Negotiation and Civic Engagement (Spring) or
- CPLN 507 Urban Design Methods (Spring)*
- CPLN 508 Research Methods for Planners (Fall, starting 2010)
*Students in the Urban Design concentration can take CPLN 507 as their methods breadth course and use Case Studies in Urban Design as their substitute concentration course.
The Internship Requirement
Because a planning education extends beyond the classroom, all MCP students are required to complete a planning internship, usually between their first and second years. Internships may be paid or unpaid, but they must involve full-time work. Internships can be completed at any government agency or commission, private consulting firm, or non-profit or advocacy organization involved in planning practice, policy, or research.
To aid students in finding an appropriate internship and to connect them with professional contacts and alumni, PennPlanning sponsors a spring Internship Fair.
Students may intern at a Philadelphia-based organization, such as the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, Transportation Resource Associates or the Women's Community Revitalization Project; or look elsewhere in the country.
Internships outside the Philadelphia region have included Nelson/Nygaard in Boston, the Mayor's Office of Chicago, Glatting Jackson in Orlando, the Saint Louis Development Corporation and the South Portland Land Trust.
Concentrations
The essence of good planning is making connections. To facilitate this, PennPlanning offers four concentrations which integrate knowledge across related specializations: (1) Community & Economic Development; (2) Land Use-Transportation-Environmental Planning; (3) Public Private Development and (4) Urban Design. Students are free to sample different concentrations during their first year, with the goal of selecting their final concentration/specialization before the start of their third semester. Although students may petition the faculty for individual course substitutions, all MCP students must complete coursework in one of PennPlanning's four concentrations. Click on the links below to learn more about each concentration:
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