9 Best Urban Planning Master of Arts (MA) Degree Programs for 2024

The Master of Architecture program emphasizes knowledge of humanist values as they impact contemporary design. It promotes the acquisition of comprehensive design skills through learning and doing — taking concepts and theories acquired in the classroom and using them in the real world.

The English-taught MA provides education and training for internationally oriented architects, in accordance with the Directive of the European Parliament 2005/36/CE. It gives students excellent preparation for the changing demands of society, both in the technical-scientific area and the humanities. It teaches how to cope with present-day problems related to urban and natural landscapes. It focuses on the conservation and transformation of different architectural and urban contexts, with special attention paid to environmental, economic, and social sustainability. MA Architecture prepares students to tackle pressing architectural, urban, and environmental issues in the national and international scenes. It proposes updated visions of architecture and integrates them with ideas from global culture. It employs the most innovative techniques and methodologies to train generations of digital natives. This also means providing cross-disciplinary competences in – urban projects and theories on the city, with their related issues of sustainable growth and sustainable decrease – Italian cultural heritage and its conservation through regenerative projects that can be applied to other countries and contexts – interior and exhibition design – a global asset for today’s architects.

This course is designed to increase the student's professional skills in the theoretical and practical aspects of landscape architecture so providing access to a range of employment opportunities including chartership of the Landscape Institute. Subjects are explored through contemporary urban and rural landscape design with a focus on ecological approaches.

Art Center’s Graduate Environmental Design program addresses the relationships between body, materials, space, and emotion. Our focus goes beyond style, considering the links between the psychological, physical, emotional and sensory effects of quality design.

The City & Regional Planning and Community Development programs at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University educate students to become leaders who collaborate with diverse communities to establish lasting improvements for residents. Students both engage the challenges and leverage the opportunities of cities in their coursework, taking advantage of the deep resources of Temple—a leading public research university—to perform their own hands-on research and service learning across Philadelphia. Tyler’s faculty of forward-thinking practitioners are dedicated to personal mentorship that includes access to their networks of professionals, organizations and agencies.

Graduate students in geography and urban studies research environmental issues, gender and race, geographic methods, international development, social and spatial theory, and urban development. The MA degree is designed to prepare students for further graduate study as well as for professional positions related to urban and economic development, environmental sustainability and social justice. MA students have the option to pursue a graduate certificate in GIS with no additional coursework.

The MA Architecture Programme (ARB/RIBA Part II) at the Royal College of Art is a research-driven, studio-based post-graduate education that critically tests the making of architecture and spatial practice. The program supports the development of each student’s personal position and practices relative to the field. The program fosters an inclusive, critical, and responsive, context in which architecture is explored as a medium, rather than a goal in itself. We are attentive to urgent political, social, and ecological questions, which allows us to interrogate the contexts and processes of architectural production and support our students to redefine practice.

The MA City Design envisions new concepts of city and urban life by placing design speculation at the core of social innovation. City life is undergoing momentous change. New forms of urban development and technologically driven forms of social innovation are transforming the way we live, work, reproduce and take care of the world around us, producing new lines of social solidarity as well as new sites of social conflict. Yet most of the methods used to research and design cities have resisted change, thus limiting our ability to perceive relevant changes and conceive radically different futures.

The Master of Arts program offers an introduction to landscape architecture. Coursework emphasizes the essential factors involved in the creation of outdoor spaces. This program is appropriate for students who want to learn about the profession but are not interested in practicing as a landscape architect in the future.