The Top Schools For Urban Planners

Over the six years that Planetizen has been in existence, we've heard from lots of people looking for information about planning school. Which universities offer planning programs? Which are the best schools? Which schools allow me to combine the study of planning with law? Or public health?

While we always tried to point people in the right direction, we felt that there was a general lack of information about graduate study in urban planning - and particularly absent was an overall comparison of different urban planning programs around the nation. By the Fall of 2005, when our former managing editor (and current planning student), David Gest, was applying to graduate school, we decided to develop an informative resource for prospective planning students.

The result is the Planetizen 2007 Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs -- the first independent guide and ranking of graduate urban planning programs. This inaugural edition features a list of the top 25 graduate urban planning programs. The Guide also contains a directory of 94 graduate planning programs in the U.S. and Canada, including detailed information for 45 schools that responded to a detailed questionnaire.

While we think a list of the top planning schools was long overdue, we're most excited about being able to publish a list of the top schools in each of 12 different specialty areas. With many new planning students interested in particular areas of the field -- such as transportation or historic preservation -- we believe this will be of the most benefit to students who are serious about pursuing an educational program that most closely matches their interests. And since many students want to consider the best schools in their area, we've included a list of the top schools in each region of the country -- the Midwest, Northeast, South, and West.

To produce this guide, Planetizen enlisted the help of the professional opinion research firm Davis, Hibbits, and Midghall, Inc., based in Portland, Oregon. During the Fall of 2006, Planetizen surveyed hundreds of professionals, educators and students -- along with the schools themselves -- to gather information about what makes a good planning school, and find out which schools meet those criteria. Guided by a group of experienced planning educators and experts, we developed a process that -- while by no means perfect -- provides a creditable comparison of schools that will help prospective students evaluate the options for graduate study in urban planning.

Topping the list of the best graduate urban planning programs is the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school's graduate planning program, which is one of the oldest and largest in the country, draws students from around the globe to study issues from transportation to housing development. The University of California, Berkeley, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill -- both public institutions often recognized for their educational excellence in many fields -- are ranked second and third, respectively.

Rounding out the top ten schools are: Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts), University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, California), Cornell University (Ithaca, New York), Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (New Brunswick, New Jersey), University of Southern California (Los Angeles, California), and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (Champaign, Illinois).

As we went about producing the guide, we heard from a number of people in the planning community who told us that ranking schools was an inexact science, and that it would mislead prospective students into considering schools based only upon their reputation. While we certainly acknowledge the danger of placing too much importance on the reputation of a university, in the end, we decided that information was a useful measure for prospective students to consider as one part of their decision making process. (Interestingly, during our survey process, educators, professionals and students all considered a school's reputation as one of the most valuable measures for evaluating a school.)

We are very excited to have the opportunity to release the Planetizen 2007 Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs, and we hope the Guide will become a recognized resource for those considering pursuing a career in planning.

Going forward, we plan to make changes and improvements to the guide so that the next edition can provide even more benefit to students and the programs themselves -- giving everyone a better picture about the study and practice of urban planning.

For more information, or to order a copy of the 2007 Planetizen Guide To Graduate Urban Planning Programs, visit www.planetizen.com/guide.