Taubman College

The Urban Design Program

“Our lives now are lived at the metropolitan scale. We no longer live in isolated villages, neighborhoods or even singular cities... How neighborhoods, districts, and urban centers fit together is as important as the urban design of a block or building.”
Peter Calthorpe,
Michigan Debates on Urbanism
“There is a specificity and a meaning to the American environment for better or worse, and we need to focus on it: suburbia, in-between areas, everyday space or whatever you want to call it. All those strip malls and parking lots are our environment and we need to engage with them in a productive way.”
Margaret Crawford
Michigan Debates on Urbanism
“The interesting problem for this country is not what you do with New Yorks, Chicagos, etc., but what you do with the Tulsas, Kansas Cities, the Detroits, the St. Louises where postwar growth has not been sustained and the cities have emptied out.”
Peter Eisenman
Michigan Debates on Urbanism
“After thousands of years of a world population that was almost exclusively rural and hundreds of years of one that was predominantly rural, half of the people of the world now live in urban areas. At this historic moment in civilization—the urban/rural equinox—it behooves us to better understand, plan, design, and build cities.”
Douglas Kelbaugh FAIA,
Former dean (1999–2008) Taubman College
“As the United States confronts the environmental implications of its late-20th century anti-urbanism, now is an opportune time for urban designers to re-assert the primacy of the city—and its sustainable development in other parts of the world.”
Roy Strickland, Director
Director, Urban Design Program
“We need to develop a new vocabulary to talk about the city.”
Lars Lerup
2004 Eliel Saarinan Visiting Professor
Michigan Debates on Urbanism

In light of challenges like the ones outlined above, the practice of urban design is increasingly important in the United States and across the globe. Urban designers give shape and form to city blocks, districts, and metropolitan areas, articulating urban plans in three dimensions and establishing the rules, guidelines, and frameworks for architects and developers to follow. Occupying a central role in the development and redevelopment of cities, urban designers draw simultaneously on the analysis and policy roles of urban planners and the form-giving aspects of architects. They engage the totality of design, including landscape architecture and urban planning, and serve as the critical, catalytic link across disciplines and professions.

Students in the program, who have come from North and South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Asia, are prepared to practice urban design with the capacities to:

  • 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, geo-politics, and social equity
  • work collaboratively with urban planners, landscape architects, architects, public officials, and real estate developers
  • communicate ideas in clear and compelling ways—visually, orally, and in writing—as is demanded by the urban designer’s public role.

These capacities are developed in a rigorous sequence of studios that are integrated with academic courses in urban design theory, history, methodology, and practice, as well as real estate development. Students further enrich their preparation through the program’s elective or by taking the international study option.

M.U.D. Resources and Activities

A rich array of resources and activities are open to Masters in Urban Design (M.U.D.) Program students. These include:

  • Travel is an important part of program studios and seminars. Nothing quite equals experiencing real places for developing ideas for and perspectives on urban design. Students visit major cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, Portland and Venice, Italy as part of their studio and seminar work. Travel costs are partially subsidized by the program.
  • The international study option allows program students to satisfy their elective requirement by taking an additional spring half-term in the College’s study-abroad courses. Recent locations include India, China, Ghana, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Japan and the Czech Republic.
  • The Charles Moore Visiting Professorship brings a prominent designer each winter term to co-teach with program faculty in the M.U.D. studio. (Past appointments include Ken Greenberg, Max Bond, Steven Peterson, Barbara Littenberg, Ghislaine Hermanuz, and Michael Dennis.)
  • The Taubman College lecture series brings distinguished practitioners and academics from around the world to present and debate important issues about design. The recentMichigan Debates on Urbanism, for example, included designers and critics Peter Eisenman, Peter Calthorpe, Lars Lerup, Margaret Crawford, and Michael Speaks, who discussed the topics of Everyday, New, Post, and ReUrbanism.
  • Taubman College Architecture and Planning Programs offering both wide-ranging courses that may be taken by qualified MUD students and special events, seminars, lectures, and exhibitions that are open to all Taubman College students.

Taubman College Resources and Activities

One of the M.U.D. program’s significant advantages is its location within the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. Taubman College is one of the nation’s leading schools of design and planning. Its recent receipt of a $30 million gift from Alfred Taubman, one of the most influential post-World War II American real estate developers, is the largest gift ever made to a school of architecture and planning. New faculty, increased student financial aid, new technology, and updated classrooms are results of the Taubman gift, reinforcing Taubman College’s intellectual strengths and enhancing its facilities, including the country’s largest academic design studio—three quarters of an acre in size. This studio provides architecture, planning and urban design students and faculty the opportunity to engage in each others’ work and exchange ideas. Taubman College’s other programs include Architecture and Planning which offer courses that may be taken by qualified M.U.D. students as well as special events, seminars, lectures and exhibitions.

The Taubman College lecture series brings distinguished practitioners and academics from around the world to present and debate important issues about design.The recent Michigan Debates on Urbanism, for example, included designers and critics Peter Eisenman, Peter Calthorpe, Lars Lerup, Margaret Crawford, and Michael Speaks, who discussed the topics of Everyday, New, Post, and ReUrbanism.

Taubman College Architecture and Planning Programs offer wide-ranging courses that may be taken by qualified M.U.D. students and special events, seminars, lectures, and exhibitions are open to all students.