The Master of Science in City Planning requires a minimum of 36 credits for those with at least one year of work experience, and 39 credits for those required to complete a 3-credit internship.
The degree requires the following components:
8 core courses (24 credits)
1 depth course (3 credits)
2 elective courses (6 credits)
1 internship course (if required; 3 credits)
Capstone in city planning (3 credits)
The MSCP may be completed full-time (9 credits or more per semester) or part-time (less than 9 credits per semester). Classes will be offered during the evening and online in the fall, winter, spring, and summer semesters.
Core Courses
Students will take all 8 core courses from the following list
This course will review the development of city planning as a field of practice, with a focus on historical precedents that have served to establish best principles and practices today. The course will also review a range of theories on the positive and normative roles of planning and urban governance institutions in society, and on how planners can act to improve sustainability and equity in cities. Theoretical and practical material will focus on principles that are most germane to city planning in New York City but will draw on cases from around the U.S. and internationally, as well.
This course surveys the range of major sub-fields in city planning and introduces students to the different types of interventions and practices planners encounter in the profession. Major sub-fields introduced include: transportation and infrastructure planning; housing, community and economic development; environmental planning; land use planning; urban design; and international development planning. Key practices reviewed include: diverse and equitable methods of stakeholder engagement; general and neighborhood plan development; land use controls; and professional ethics.
This class reviews the three major domains that form the legal basis of city planning in the U.S.: land use law, local government law, and environmental law. Through close reading of case law, students develop an understanding of the jurisprudence, as established through both court decisions as well as court dicta, that enables and constrains planning action.
This studio or practicum-style course leads students through a hands-on development of a long-range community plan for a neighborhood in New York City or State. This class focuses on how planners enhance objective data with community input to craft long-range recommendations for community land use, mobility, and community services. The course covers topics such as long-range planning process, community and stakeholder engagement, plan creation and implementation, and methods of intervention to understand and influence the future.
The course provides an introduction to basic map making skills and the use of maps and spatial data in policy applications. Students will learn how to create and interpret thematic maps, by hands-on experience with mapping software. Advanced topics will include spatial construction of data, and use spatial data in quantitative applications.
PAF 9270 teaches students how to collect qualitative and quantitative data for domestic and international policy or practice purposes and how to analyze and present data for descriptive purposes. It also teaches students how to interpret existing descriptive analyses to extract relevant and accurate information. The course will introduce the following topics: research questions and concepts, descriptive vs. causal research, case-oriented vs. variable-oriented approaches, sampling, data cleaning, and determining and maintaining data collection for organizations. Students will develop the following specific skills: using spreadsheets, univariate and bivariate descriptive statistics, data visualization, conducting interviews or qualitative observation, analyzing and coding qualitative data, designing and assessing measures, and designing survey questionnaires and procedures. Course sections will use applications tailored towards students’ interests and concentrations.
PAF 9271 is meant for students pursuing domestic or international careers in management, fundraising, budget analysis, and other practice areas and will use data and applications relevant to such work. It emphasizes managerial, organizational, and practice examples and context. This course teaches students how to extract from existing analyses relevant and accurate information to enhance practice. It also teaches students how to conduct basic quantitative and qualitative analyses within organizations to shed light on which programs do and do not work, how well they work, and which features contribute. Specific topics include: logic models and mechanisms; developing and curating administrative data; collecting and analyzing interview, focus group, qualitative observation, and extant qualitative data; analyzing organizational data using spreadsheets and dashboards; pre-post, interrupted time series, comparative designs, and difference-in-difference analysis; methods for rolling out and managing programs to get good causal evidence; recognizing natural experiments. Course sections will use applications tailored towards students’ interests and concentrations.
Examination of the structure and dynamics of New York City government, with special emphasis on the development and delivery of city services.
Depth Courses
Students will select 1 depth course from the following list
Community development is an approach to addressing poverty and its related social problems, such as poor-quality housing, unemployment, lack of education, and crime. Students will examine the complex economic, political, and social context that gave rise to the idea of community development, and then follow the successes and challenges in the field over its nearly fifty-year history.
The course serves as a gateway to the field of housing and community development, giving students the background necessary to become informed participants in policy analysis and debates about the future of housing policy. Topics to be covered include: housing markets and policies; the evolution of federal, state, and local housing programs, with emphasis on low-income rental housing; as well as several longstanding and thorny housing policy topics.
This course focuses on private mobility (e.g., cars, bicycles, new technologies), local public and collective transportation (e.g., buses, subways, light rail) in urban U.S. settings. Transportation policies that drive capital planning and demand management have implications for land use, the environment, and the equability of access to opportunities.
This course introduces students to the major features of the field of urban economic development. The course reviews the principles by which economic activity is organized in an urban setting, focuses on methods of analyzing the existing economic structure of a community, and examines examples of successful business development, human resource development, community-based employment, and physical development programs.
The course focuses on the theory and practice of urban sustainability policies and programs. It addresses public policies as they helped shape the growth and uses of urban land within 20th and 21st century cities in the United States, within context of supporting or contesting long-term sustainable practices. The concentration will be on the historical evolution of land uses in New York as they affect the overall sustainability of its communities and economy.
This course introduces students to the major features and debates in environmental policy, focusing primarily on the metropolitan environment in the United States. Students are introduced to environmental issues with respect to both the human and physical environments; the major interest groups that affect environmental policy; and the regulatory procedures under which environmental policy is implemented, particularly environmental impact analysis under NEPA and state and local environmental reviews.
The urgent challenge of climate change demands innovative solutions and comprehensive policy frameworks. This graduate-level course provides a systems approach to understanding the essential policy questions and analytic tools necessary to achieve the energy transition required to address climate change. We will cover a broad range of topics, including an overview of the energy and climate landscape, project economics, energy sources and technologies, energy demand, environmental and health impacts, power system analysis, energy transition strategies, energy efficiency, sustainable consumption, climate justice, big data and AI for climate change, and the limitations of models. We will also explore emerging topics relevant to energy systems and achieving carbon neutrality. Through a combination of lectures, case studies, and real-world assignments, students will gain a comprehensive understanding of the essentials of energy and climate policy. By the end of the course, students will be equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge to pursue a career in the energy and climate policy field. We aim to provide students with a nuanced understanding of the energy transition landscape and prepare them to make a meaningful impact in shaping the policy frameworks that will drive the transition towards a sustainable future.
By 2050, 68% of the world’s population will live in cities, with particular growth occurring in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This course will examine urban policymaking from a comparative perspective in cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Karachi, Lagos, Shanghai, Cape Town, and Mumbai. The course will put particular emphasis on policies regarding housing, public safety, and climate change.
Elective Courses
Students will take 2 elective courses from the following list. They may also fulfill this requirement by taking additional depth courses from the list above, or may propose other courses of interest for approval to the program degree director.
This is a course about the poor and anti-poverty programs in the United States. It focuses on measurement, extent, and distribution of poverty; causes of poverty; tradeoffs faced by policy-makers in reducing poverty and economic insecurity; and the spatial concentration of poverty. It covers major social policies intended to reduce poverty and inequality, and the evidence on policy effectiveness.
Introduces students to communication in public settings and provides extensive opportunities for practice with basic written and oral forms. Interrelationships among communicative activities and organizational goals. Internal and external messages are given equal weight. Argumentative structures necessary for constructing sound policy and persuasive techniques relevant to funding, regulation, client, and public constituencies. Topics will vary somewhat from semester to semester depending on the instructor’s and students’ interests. The course follows a workshop/laboratory format with intensive attention to student work as a fulcrum for the application of theory and refinement of skills.
.This course examines the communication strategies of activists, social movement leaders, and politicians who have worked for the equity and inclusion of groups marginalized according to race, gender, class, ethnicity, citizenship, sexuality, or ability. The course will explore constraints and obstacles to marginalized groups’ political participation and representation, how members of marginalized groups have rhetorically navigated those obstacles, and how their social protest has been represented in mediated texts. Each section of this course will vary according to the instructor’s expertise and interests (perhaps focusing more on race, or gender, or ethnicity, etc.), but each section will approach power in terms of intersectionality.
This class explains different forms of inequality, identifies their origins, and analyzes how and why race and racism shape laws and public policies. The class will assess policies, current and proposed, to reduce inequality, and strategies to promote a more just and ethical society.
This course concerns the relationship of ethics and public service. Those in public service face a broad array of ethical problems and dilemmas ranging from simple matters of public trust through the application of ethical reasoning in policymaking. The course examines the limits of self-interest in public service, the differing ethical concerns of elective and appointive officials, the conflict between responsibility to hierarchical authority and personal conceptions of the right, bureaucratic responsibility for the ethical content of public policies, and the possibility of necessary evil. A significant portion of this course focuses on ethical theories that may help resolve these dilemmas.
In this class, students study management techniques and strategies applicable to nonprofit agencies. The topics include agency interaction with governmental and political institutions, planning and control systems, the role of the governing board, and the role of the executive director. The course pays special attention to the needs of community service/social welfare and cultural/arts organizations.
This course focuses on the budget cycle and budget decision-making. It includes tools for developing, implementing, and controlling a budget within a, typically, public organization. Topics include development of operating budgets, cash budgets, break-even analysis, cost behavior, the time value of money, capital budgeting, long-term financing, and variance analysis. Basic budget accounting concepts are studied. The course includes development of spreadsheet skills for budgeting.
This course is for students whose career path is the nonprofit world and aspires to hold senior level positions in nonprofits. The course provides the tools for budgeting in a nonprofit, and the tools of financial analysis and managerial control as is currently practiced in nonprofit organizations.
This course assesses the role of government in the modern economy. The course examines the reasons for government intervention in the economy, consequences of that intervention, and issues pertaining to the public financing of those interventions. An important part of this class is the study of public finance, tax incidence, and fiscal federalism. The course has two main goals: to build and refine skills of microeconomic policy analysis, and more important, to apply these skills to contemporary policy problems.
The purpose of the course is to introduce students to policy, planning and management of human services issues that arise in preparing for and responding to disasters and emergencies that have broad effects on people, property, and communities. The course includes the role of both government and nonprofit organizations in responding to disasters and in providing services for relief and recovery. The course also addresses issues of readiness and planning by public and community organizations. Recent and historical events provide examples for students to examine and compare.
Social and community entrepreneurs seek to solve societal problems governments and corporations have failed to address. Critically surveying a globally diverse field of concepts and practices, this course examines how to meaningfully effect social change through innovative business models that put people and planet before profit, and through entrepreneurial and organizing strategies to alter the behaviors and practices of governments and existing enterprises. We also examine multi-faceted entrepreneurial responses to challenges like racial injustice, climate change, the housing crisis, and economic inequality.
The course will look at public policy in its application to other species. It will focus on the assumptions behind those policies, inconsistencies in the values represented, and the lessons learned about ourselves from considering the perspective of other animals. It will also consider how climate change might impact our understanding of the rights and welfare of other animals.
In the age of globalization and new public management, the traditional lines between public and private actors are increasingly blurred. The state’s role in problem solving has changed and, in many cases, new roles have been created for private, and for profit, nonprofit, and global governance organizations. What are the benefits and limitations of these new governance roles? This course addresses this question by examining our current state of local, national, and global governance.
Internship
Internship (PAF 9195) This course provides students with real-world planning experience in a public, nonprofit or private organization. It may be used as an elective course for students with work history. The work assignment requires 150 hours. Class sessions are determined by the instructor. The course is graded on a pass/no-credit basis.
Capstone in City Planning
Capstone in City Planning (PAF 9690) This course is an advanced seminar in which students in their last semester before graduation produce a project drawing from the full course of study toward the MSCP. The project may involve policy research, intensive study of an organization or planning outcome, development of a rationale for new or changed planning policies or programs, or some combination of these. Special attention is placed on incorporating knowledge from the core MSCP curriculum. A successful Capstone will require rigorous research, in-depth analysis, clear writing, and persuasive oral presentations.