Master of Urban Planning and Policy
Master of Urban Design

General Information
The Department of Architecture and Design offers two graduate degrees: Master of Urban Planning and Policy (MUPP) and Master of Urban Design (MUD).
The MUPP and MUD programs offer a first graduate degree to students interested in acquiring the critical skills necessary to analyze urban contexts and to formulate urban interventions in the form of projects and/or policies. The two graduate programs emphasize research skills as primary tools for teaching and learning. The graduate programs also seek to create a multidisciplinary debate among various approaches to understanding and practicing urban planning and urban design by enrolling students with different social science and design-based undergraduate degrees, as well as by hosting lectures and organizing yearly seminars that reflect on the different professions of and practices in the built environment, in addition to encouraging linkages with other schools of social science and design in the University. This research-based and multidisciplinary approach to urban planning and urban design make the MUPP and MUD programs unique in Lebanon and the region where most other planning programs are structured as applied professional degrees.

Program Structure
The two graduate programs extend over two years of full time enrollment. The MUPP track requires students to take a total of 30 credits, nine of them in a sub-discipline of specialization where planning and policy-making skills are applied. The MUD track requires students to take a total of 33 credits, 12 of them in applied design studios. The two tracks share a common core of 21 credits consisting of three core courses (Research Methods; Planning Theory and Policy; and Urbanism), one planning/design workshop and final Thesis. The thesis necessarily involves empirical research and generates innovative ways of thinking and understanding the future context of their practice. In addition, all students enrolled in the MUPP/MUD programs are required to take the zero-credit seminar entitled City Debates at least twice during their university enrollment. One of the core courses, Urbanism, could be waived, depending on the student background and upon the consent of the academic advisor.

Common Core MUPP/MUD

MUPP Courses

MUPP students are required to take three courses from one area of concentration (9 credits), in a field of applied social sciences or engineering (such as sociology, economics, public administration, civil or environmental engineering) leading towards concentration areas such as urban policy, community development, transportation, labor, housing, or environmental sustainability. Other options may be agreed upon with the MUPP/MUD academic advisor.

MUD Courses

MUD students are required to take, one design studio and two approved electives (12 credits).

Program Agenda

The typical course load for Urban Planning and Policy and Urban Design programs is normally distributed over two years as shown below. Course distribution is subject to the approval of the academic advisor.

Urban Planning and Policy Program

Urban Design Program

Admission Qualifications

Applicants who meet all AUB and FEA regulations governing admission to graduate study (including acceptable EEE or TOEFL scores) and who hold the equivalent of an undergraduate degree in architecture, landscape architecture, environmental design, urban or regional planning, engineering, economics, public administration, or sociology may be admitted to the Master of Urban Planning and Policy program as regular graduate students.

Applicants who meet all AUB and FEA requirements governing admission to graduate study (including acceptable EEE or TOEFL scores) and who hold the equivalent of a professional Bachelor of Architecture degree may be admitted to the Master of Urban Design program as graduate students. Students who do not have a professional Bachelor of Architecture degree will not be admitted to the Master of Urban Design program.

For admission purposes, the cumulative undergraduate average of all students, regardless of undergraduate major, will be computed over all courses taken during the last two years of undergraduate study. If the credit total for all courses taken during the last two years is fewer than 60 credits, courses from previous semesters will be considered until this number is at least 60.

Course Descriptions

Mandatory Core Courses

Each of the following courses is required for MUPP/ MUD students. Non-majors must secure the approval of the program adviser and the instructor concerned in order to enroll in any of the courses listed below.

URDS 601 Planning and Design Workshop 6 cr.

The course investigates the multiplicity of readings of a place, how they contribute to the production of space, and how they impact approaches to urban planning and design. It seeks to confront legal and institutional lenses with anthropological investigations of how space is perceived and experienced by its producers and/or users and revealed through classic investigations of social analysis. Based on a selected case study, the class aims at generating a series of mappings through which actual planning and design interventions are developed.

URDS 602 Design Studio 6 cr.

In this studio in urban design, a case study is selected for which a rationale for an intervention has to be devised and a design intervention elaborated. Prerequisite: Graduate standing in Urban Design.

URDS 603 Design Thesis 6 cr.

Supervised research and design is tailored to individual students and culminates in a final thesis in urban design. Prerequisites: URPL 680.

URPL 630 Research Methods 3 cr.

This course examines the process and practice of qualitative research, as applied to the field of urban planning and urban design, stressing the logic of scientific explanations. The elements of research design are investigated by focusing on the study of several qualitative and quantitative methods. Students learn how to design their research methodology in accordance with their research problem.

URPL 631 Introduction to Planning Theory and Policy 3 cr.

A course designed to introduce students to current debates and practices in the field of planning in lower income countries, looking at how, where, and by whom planning is practiced, and how planning goals have evolved over the past decades. Students read and discuss relevant debates in the field of planning. Special emphasis is placed on encouraging students to articulate their own positions and to discuss planning practices in the context of the Middle East.

URPL 632 Urbanism 3 cr.

This course is designed as an introduction for students in urban design and urban planning to the field of urban studies, with a major emphasis on how this field has been conceptualized since the early 1970s. It seeks to expose them to some of the ways in which social scientists have conceptualized and researched urban spaces, such as the social production of space, the city as growth machine, the city as body politics, and others.

URPL 660 City Debates Seminar 0 cr.

The seminar, titled “City Debates”, addresses various urban issues each year; in particular, it tackles ongoing planning and design concerns related to Lebanon’s post-war development from a multidisciplinary perspective. The seminar is offered annually during the spring semester. Topics have included: A Critical Assessment of the Lebanese National Master Plan; La Meen Beirut? (Whose Beirut?); and Urban Heritage and the Politics of the Present - Perspectives from the Middle East.

URPL 661 Planning and Design Workshop 6 cr.

See description of URDS601.

URPL 680 Thesis Preparation 3 cr.

The core course prepares students who have completed most of their graduate coursework to write their final thesis. Students identify a case-study, select a research problem, develop a hypothesis and a research question, and propose related methods of inquiry. The course outcome is a completed thesis proposal.

URPL 681 Planning Thesis 6 cr.

Supervised research conducted individually by the student and constituting a final thesis in urban planning. Prerequisite: URPL 680.

Elective Courses

MUPP-MUD elective courses are open to graduates and senior undergraduates from all departments at AUB. New electives are introduced annually.

URPL 620 Building the Colonies: 3 cr.

Colonialism, Imperialism, and Urban Change

Colonialism and imperialism can be interpreted as part of larger ideological and sociopolitical systems that continue to inform changing cultural values today. This seminar uses sites of colonial urbanism to investigate ways that spatial organization is used to produce historical knowledge. We consider alterations made to pre-existing cities, as well as new city plans, both built and projected, in the Americas, in Asia, and around the Mediterranean Rim.

URPL 634 Anthropology of/in the City 3cr.

This course actively explores different anthropological approaches to space and spatial practices: structuralism or “the praxis of living”; individual mindscapes; and the practice of fieldwork. The course also investigates notions of private and public by debating questions of behavior in public, of morality and geographical limits. It also looks at urban public space, more specifically at the others who occupy it, at movement and practices of everyday life and at non-places. Finally, we study issues of boundaries, spaces and places by studying sacred spaces, gender segregation and social distinctions. The course closes with debates on city culture(s) and anthropology.

URPL 635 Politics of Place & Practices of Heritage 3cr.

and Tourism in the Middle-East

The course is concerned with concepts of cultural change and therefore attempts to understand moments of rarity and transformation and the shift from modernity to the current postmodern condition and neo-liberal agendas working to re-structure cities and built environment around us through a complex dialogue between the local and the global. The course aims to unravel and understand the various networks, communication structures, and discourses that operate between and within various types of publics and actors involved in the definition, production, and consumption of heritage and their links to issues of place politics, tourism, and community development.

URPL 636 Urban Economics 3 cr.

This course focuses on using the principles of economic analysis to explain why cities exist, where they develop, how they grow, how different activities are arranged within cities and the spatial aspects of urban problems such as traffic congestion, poverty, and substandard housing. The main economic concepts that are used include the consumer choice model, monopolistic competition, the input choice model, short-run and long-run curves, and the interaction between markets.

URPL 637 The Spatiality of Urban Social Exclusion 3 cr.

This course equips students with an understanding of the concept and phenomenon of social exclusion and its spatial manifestations. It aims to create an understanding of how and why cities are increasingly affected by this phenomenon and how social exclusion links with spatial exclusion. The course also aims to shed light on how urban regeneration and housing initiatives can affect social exclusion and the consequences that it has on citizenship.

URPL 638 Development Aid in the MENA: 3 cr.

Impacts on Cities and Spatial Planning

This course combines political science and urban studies to investigate the impacts of development aid policies and programs on cities and spatial planning. Students learn about development aid's rationale and about different donors' paradigms vis-à-vis cities in the MENA. Selected policy sectors are examined to gauge the effects of development aid on the built environment, highlighting encountered challenges. Possible reforms to improve the effectiveness of development aid are also discussed.

URPL 639 Decentralization Debates 3 cr.

This course introduces students to contemporary debates in the decentralization literature. It critically analyzes the two underlying premises in favor of decentralization processes toward local governments --namely local democracy and economic performance. The course also addresses the Lebanese scene of local government, and engages students in the evaluation of decentralization reforms in Lebanon.

URPL 640 Housing Problems and Policies in Lower Income Countries 3 cr.

The course introduces students to the major debates in the field of housing policies, and looks at the modes of production, the actors, and the institutions involved in the production of and access to housing. To this end, the course combines a mix of theory and applied case studies, taken whenever possible from the Lebanese context.

URPL 650 Transportation Policy and Planning 3 cr.

The course focuses on transportation policy and planning for transportation facilities and services as well as the interaction between transportation and built, natural and social environments. The course intends to provide students with the necessary knowledge for analyzing transportation problems in the field, as well as with a policy framework for examining the broader social, economic, and environmental implications of alternative transportation planning decisions. Policy-making and policy instruments are discussed, alternative institutional arrangements for policy development and implementation are considered and the efficacy of different policy interventions are evaluated. The interaction between technical analysis and policy making is also examined.

URPL 662 Introduction to Policy Analysis 3 cr.

This course introduces students to the analysis of public policies--taken in their broad sense, as programs, regulations, and decisions elaborated by a diversity of stakeholders belonging to formal and informal institutions. The seminar teaches students tools for analyzing development and planning policies, and for proposing alternative policy interventions. The course uses the Lebanese scene as its research field, but also investigates other policy case-studies.

URPL 663 Urban Land Use Planning 3 cr.

This course provides policy context for understanding land use issues. It examines various theoretical approaches to urban spatial structure, bringing market oriented influences and public oriented interests into balance through the land use plan and guidance system. It also discusses how this structure evolves and changes. The course focuses on the frameworks by which this balance could be achieved.

URDS 633 Urban Form and Its Formation 3 cr.

The course examines the various elements that make up urban patterns, giving insight into the city-building processes that generate these patterns. Students are exposed to urban morphology and planning history, and urban historical geography. The goal is to build up an ability to ‘read’ and ‘write’ the city through a range of disparate approaches. The course concludes by considering the ways in which knowledge about urban forms can contribute to the practice of planners and designer as molders and managers of changing urban landscapes.

URDS634 The Contested Urban Heritage of Cities in the Arab World 3cr.

The seminar focuses on urban heritage and the politics of its identification, conservation and representation. The principal theoretical position recognizes heritage as an intrinsically contested notion. Issues such as collective memory, invented traditions, constructed identities, heritage tourism, cultural consumption and sacredscapes are debated and examined through case studies that include Jerusalem, Beirut, Cairo, Riyadh and Dubai.

URDS664 Ecological Landscape Design and Planning 3cr.

The course, an introduction to the theory and methodology of ecological landscape design and planning, aims to introduce the holistic approach of landscape ecology and its application in sustainable management of natural and cultural landscapes/ecosystems. The course syllabus is planned to prioritize on Mediterranean ecosystems and landscapes and equally to promote interdisciplinary collaboration in research and project management.