Best Accredited Universities for Doctoral Phd program in Urban Studies and Affairs

14 universities offer graduate PHD program in Urban Studies and Affairs

Check out our exclusive data on scholarships and financial aid offered by universities for the Master's program in Urban Studies and Affairs. There are also 700+ scholarships available from accredited sources with the amount ranging from $1000-$22k.

Columbia University in the City of New York logo
Ranked as:  #4 in Best National University
Tuition:  $51,194 per year
Total Cost:  $102,388 * This tuition data is based on IPEDS. For the latest tuition amount, refer to the respective college websites.
State:  New York
Acceptance:  6.66%

Please note: GSAS confers the degree for this program and administers its admissions, but degree requirements and financial aid are administered by the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

As cities continue to evolve, innovative policies and practices are needed so that development is equitable and sustainable. The Urban Planning program offers the knowledge and skills that define an effective urban planner while presenting numerous opportunities to reflect on the role of planning in society and issues of social and global equity.

Throughout the curriculum, the emphasis is on real-world challenges and how planners can improve the lives of urban residents. Armed with these experiences, our students graduate with the capability to analyze issues, develop plans, and advise policymakers on the growth and development of cities with the intent of making cities just, equitable, and prosperous.

While the GRE is optional, applicants who do not have quantitative academic experience are encouraged to submit GRE results to supplement their application.

Fellowships are awarded in recognition of academic achievement and in expectation of scholarly success. Teaching and research experience are considered an important aspect of the training of graduate students. Thus, graduate fellowships include some teaching apprenticeship.

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Urban Planning

GRE score required at Columbia University in the City of New York master's degree programs in Urban Studies and Affairs
  • GRE Required:  No
  • Research assistantships:  1081
  • Teaching assistantships:  1757
  • Financial Aid: Register to view the details
University of California-Los Angeles logo
Ranked as:  #23 in Best National University
Tuition:  $28,131 per year
Total Cost:  $56,262 * This tuition data is based on IPEDS. For the latest tuition amount, refer to the respective college websites.
State:  California
Acceptance:  14.33%

The GRE is required to Urban Planning PhD program.

Through critical analyses of public policies, plans, and programs, and the development of institutions that empower people at the grassroots.

Melding theory, policy and planning practice, and skill building to train our students in effective professional practice and advanced research.

Saturday, November 5: California Forum for Diversity in Graduate Education.

BIPOC in Planning: A Roundtable Discussion for Prospective Students.

This roundtable discussion will provide the opportunity for you to hear from a variety of BIPOC viewpoints associated with our department and will allow you to get an honest sense of what it is like to be a student of color in our program in a small, intimate setting.

And as a specialist in one or areas: community development, environmental assessment, housing, international and regional planning, transportation or urban design.

Previous experience in planning, a planning-related field or community development is recommended.

Early February: Ph.D. Decision NotificationLate February: Double Degree DecisionsEarly March: MURP Decision Notification.

Resources such as course syllabi, student groups, and international opportunities can be found on the For Our Students page. View student dissertation information here.

A minimum 3.5 grade point average in all graduate work.

Employment experience in planning or a closely-related field.

Master of Urban Planning, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Bio: Aujean Lee is a doctoral student and a graduate student researcher for the UCLA Center for the Study of Inequality. Lee Center for Leadership, the Japanese American Citizens League, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles.

Bio: Yiwen is a doctoral student at the Urban Planning at UCLA Luskin.

Yiwen is also a research affiliate of the Furman Center for Real Estate Urban Policy at New York University.

Bio: Antonia Izuogu is a North Carolina native excited to serve the Los Angeles community while pursuing a Master of Urban and Regional Planning degree from UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

The majority of your supplemental application materials should be submitted electronically via the online UCLA Application for Graduate Admission. Official transcripts only should be sent directly to:.

You will need to send us official transcripts if you are admitted to our programs.

You do not need to send in official junior college transcripts to the department unless specifically instructed to do so.

We understand that applying to graduate school is an expensive process. The fee for domestic applicants is $120. The fee for international applicants is $140.

Waivers will only be granted to those who fall under one of the categories listed on the UCLA Graduate Division application. The university will grant need-based fee waivers for currently-enrolled students who are receiving financial aid. as your method of payment. Your application will NOT be reviewed until your waiver is approved. Please follow up with the department no sooner than January, at least two weeks after you complete the application.

The university has begun a pilot program to grant fee waivers based on financial status. This will be based on tax information and will only apply to domestic students.

At that time, you may missing material(s) without penalty.

Please follow departmental guidelines over those in the graduate application for all application materials. The Statement of Purpose may be up to 1000 words, while the Personal History Statement should be limited to around 500.

Admission notification and fellowship letters are usually sent out in late February or early March.

The national deadline to inform all graduate schools of your decision is April 15th.

No, the Urban Planning does not defer admissions. You will have to re program.

Once the recommendation provider information is saved, an email will be sent to the online recommendation provider with an access code and instructions on proceed with the online recommendation.

You can view the status of your online recommendations each time you log into your application account.

However, this method is discouraged because your application may be at a slight disadvantage as compared to other applicants who use the online submission process. Through a third-party system, your referees are not able to complete the rating piece of the evaluation.

The GRE is required for the Urban Planning PhD Program ONLY.

Those who are applying for a concurrent degree program may submit GMAT LSAT scores in lieu of GRE scores. However, copies of the official score report must be provided by the applicant.

However, indicating a department is not necessary.

I did not include the department code in my GRE submission. ETS sends both electronic and paper copies to UCLA when requested.

The TOEFL is required for international applicants only. The minimum score required is 600 paper-based, 250 computer-based, or 100 internet-based. The UCLA Graduate Division requires the following minimum passing scores for each section on the internet-based exam: Writing 25, Speaking 24, Reading 21, and Listening 17.

Yes, the IELTS is accepted in lieu of the TOEFL. Please note that the minimum Overall Band Score for admission to the Urban Planning is 7.5.

An outstanding record in any area may compensate for poorer performance in another. Students accepted provisionally must achieve a minimum GPA of 3.0 during their first quarter in the program.

Some students are able to work part-time while taking a full course load.

Our program ranks among the top schools in the country, as well as internationally. According to Planetizen, the MURP program at UCLA is currently ranked 4th in the United States (2019), and 2nd according to educators.

The MURP degree is normally a two-year program.

Yes, it is fully accredited by the Planning Accreditation Board, a joint undertaking of the American Institute of Certified Planners and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning.

Yes, Urban Planning has agreements with five other departments at UCLA which allow us to offer joint degrees in less time than sequential completion of the programs. Joint degrees are offered with:.

The J.D. Program at the School of Law.

For concurrent degrees, you need to submit a complete application to each school separately.

Certain fellowships offered through UCLA Graduate Division, including the Graduate Opportunity Fellowship Program (GOFP) are applied for with the graduate application.

These are awarded to students who have demonstrated high academic achievement in their studies on this campus. International students at UCLA are not eligible for support based solely on need. Therefore, international students are strongly advised to secure funds from their own sources.

There are no citizenship requirements to either the MURP Program or the Urban Planning PhD Program.

UCLA is committed to ensuring that all students, regardless of their citizenship status, are receiving the resources that they need. The Undocumented Students Program serves as a hub to provide resources and support to all Undocumented DACAmented students.

Financial aid opportunities are available to Undocumented DACAmented students. Additionally, there is funding available for undocumented DACAmented students from the department to help with the professional degree supplemental tuition (PDST).

Be advised that, depending on your DACA AB540 status, you may not be eligible for certain kinds of aid.

Double Degree in Global and Comparative Urban Planning and Governance.

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UCLA Luskin

GRE score required at University of California-Los Angeles master's degree programs in Urban Studies and Affairs
  • GRE Required:  No
  • Research assistantships:  1599
  • Teaching assistantships:  2735
  • Financial Aid: Register to view the details
logo
Ranked as:  #25 in Best National University
Tuition:  $48,715 per year
Total Cost:  $97,430 * This tuition data is based on IPEDS. For the latest tuition amount, refer to the respective college websites.
State:  California
Acceptance:  16.11%

The Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Development prepares students to become researchers, scholars, and academics who contribute new ideas and innovate solutions to contemporary urban problems. Students obtain a solid foundation from which to launch their scholarly careers through advanced courses in planning theory and social justice, land use and urban development, climate change and sustainability, housing and real estate, data science and spatial analysis, demography, transportation and infrastructure, arts, culture, and community development.

Research in urban planning and development has a direct impact on the world around us.

Through advanced theoretical core courses in critical thinking, planning theory, urban development, and research methodology, Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Development students gain a strong foundation from which to launch their scholarly career and develop an area of expertise.

All Ph.D. students are supported for four years through a combination of fellowships and graduate assistantships that provides year-round full tuition, a competitive stipend, and health and dental insurance. Students beyond their fourth year obtain support through teaching or research assistantships, or funding from USC and or outside sources. Ph.D. students have access to stipends for conference travel.

Arthur Acolin and Annette M. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science. 2022 49(1):151-168.

Jonathan Crisman and Annette M. Kim, (2019). Property Outlaws in the Southland: The Potentials and Limits of Guerrilla Urbanism in the Cases of Arts Gentrification in Boyle Heights and Street Vending Decriminalization in Los Angeles. Urban Design International. 24: 159-170.

(2019) Veblen goods and urban distinction: The economic geography of conspicuous consumption Journal of Regional Science, 59(1): 83-117.

Matthew Miller (2015). Social Finance in Black Geographies: A Statistical Analysis of Locations in Los Angeles County. Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, 21: 78-91.

Noah Miller, Adam Rose, Dan Wei, Toon Vandyck and Christian Flachsland (2018). Achieving Paris Climate Agreement Pledges: Alternative Designs for Linking Emissions Trading, Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Vol. 12, No. 1: 170-182.

Jovanna Rosen (2016). Climate, Environmental Health Vulnerability, and Physical Planning: A Review of the Forecasting Literature. Journal of Planning Literature, 1-20.

Urban Data Lab uses computational data science and spatial analysis to explore urban transportation patterns around the world, critically interrogate how big data reshapes housing affordability, and leverage technology platforms for just, collaborative city planning.

Mission is to solve transportation problems of large metropolitan regions through interdisciplinary research, education and outreach. this partnership between USC and CSULB brings together two large urban universities with complementary strengths.

The Population Dynamics Research Group uncovers demographic trends that drive major changes in society, providing insights that lead to effective policies. These population patterns underlie areas like immigration, education, the environment, and urban growth. The Popdynamics team monitors the future using the decennial U.S. Census, the American Community Survey, and our own carefully crafted Demographic Futures projections which incorporate layers of demographic analysis and include greater detail than the census provides.

The Center for Sustainability Solutions develops policy, technological, and behavioral solutions to the most pressing sustainability problems of the Southern California region and the world. It brings together scholars and stakeholders from sustainability organizations around the world to collaborate on basic and applied research aimed at making a real-world impact.

Committed to expanding the visualization of public policy and urban planning, the USC Price School launched its Spatial Analysis Lab for research. It also critically studies how our visual narratives interface with social institutions and public discourse.

The Sol Price Center for Social Innovation was established with the recent gift to name the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. This new center aims to advance ideas, strategies, and practices that enhance the quality of life for people in urban communities.

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Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Development (Ph.D.

University of Southern California admission requirements for graduate programs in Social Sciences and Studies
  • GRE Required:  Yes
  • Research assistantships:  1324
  • Teaching assistantships:  676
  • Financial Aid: Register to view the details
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University of Michigan-Ann Arbor logo
Ranked as:  #29 in Best National University
Tuition:  $49,548 per year
Total Cost:  $99,096 * This tuition data is based on IPEDS. For the latest tuition amount, refer to the respective college websites.
State:  Michigan
Acceptance:  26.11%

Discursive Approaches to Gentrification Studies: Excavating the Market-Led Paradigm.

Gentrification is a contentious topic both theoretically and politically. A subset of urbanization, gentrification displaces existing residents as wealthier residents and developers move into an area and invest in local housing, commerce, and public infrastructure. Some view gentrification as a savior for disinvested urban areas while others challenge that it is inequitable and destroys urban communities. Both sides generally understand gentrification as an economic phenomenon and acknowledge that few mechanisms exist to offset its negative externalities. This dissertation challenges both of those assumptions. In this dissertation, I examine the academic genealogy of gentrification and its contemporary understanding in public discourse. The objective of this study is to understand how our current academic interpretation of gentrification was formed and to understand how that differs from a public understanding of the process. To this end, the dissertation uses a suite of discursive methods to examine the language of gentrification used by both academics and public actors like developers, city officials, and residents. Those methods are textual analysis, actor-network theory, and discursive frame analysis applied to a case study. Adopting this suite of approaches allows for the excavating of the initial meaning of gentrification and its transformation through academic debate. In the 1980s and 1990s, influential scholars overlooked these spatiotemporal contextual causes as they renegotiated the cause of gentrification and, thus, its meaning. I show that a new gentrification resulted from those negotiations, one defined as a market-led process with universal application. This interpretation continues to dominate gentrification studies today. My case study centered on a rezoning application for a redevelopment project in Austin, Texas shows that this market-led paradigm fails to capture how different groups understand the causes and scale of gentrification today. Relying on the tripartite contextual framework from the second chapter, I demonstrate that gentrification is fundamentally state-mediated. Further, gentrification is not equal to the materialization of development. Future research on gentrification should take care to understand local histories and contextual causes. This, coupled with empirical analysis focused on effects, will help close the gap between theoretical significance and political significance in a way that is policy relevant. Future research should also break from the market-led paradigm that dominates gentrification studies, instead focusing on the role of the state in creating the preconditions necessary for gentrification to occur. Understanding the role of the state is key to mitigating the negative effects of gentrification.

Regions, Race, Rail and Rubber: An Analysis of How Transportation Planning Decisions Contributed to Regional Segregation, 1922 1973.

The process of central city decline, deindustrialization, and suburban migration in the post-war period compounded existing discrimination in housing and employment for Black residents, effectively trapping them in the city and preventing them from accessing suburban amenities. This dissertation evaluates the role that public transportation planning played in reinforcing racial segregation by restricting transit options to suburban areas, effectually limiting physical mobility of residents. My research demonstrates that the City of Detroit Street Railways (DSR) had knowledge of suburban growth trends, sufficient budget revenues, legal jurisdiction, and the physical resources to provide service to suburban areas, but voluntarily limited suburban transit options. The failure to provide suburban service meant that the DSR could not capitalize on regional growth trends and could not recover from lost ridership numbers as Detroit depopulated through white flight and decentralization. These sources have not been comprehensively researched or peer-reviewed to date, and my research contributes to a literature gap in the history of public transportation planning in the City of Detroit. Findings are determined using interpretive analysis to understand the role that transportation planning has played in reinforcing racial segregation between city and suburb in post-war Detroit.

A Metropolitan Dilemm Regional Planning, Governance, and Power in Detroit, 1945-1995.

Scholars of planning and policy have long argued that metropolitan or regional institutions for planning and governance are needed to address such problems as urban sprawl, central city decline, and inter-jurisdictional segregation and inequality. Yet some form of regional planning and governance is already practiced in every major U.S. metro area under the auspices of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), which the federal government has mandated for roughly half a century.

I examine the question through a historical case study, based in archival research, of the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG), the MPO for the seven-county area that includes metropolitan Detroit. I argue that SEMCOG should be understood in the context of the political history of twentieth-century Detroit and the trajectory of twentieth-century American liberalism. The development of SEMCOG in the wake of the New Deal and World War Two reflected broader liberal efforts to harmonize private choice and public planning, and municipal autonomy with metropolitan interdependence, in an era of federally sponsored, whites-only suburbanization.

In the twenty years after World War Two, Detroit pioneered the development of regional institutions for planning and governance: a Regional Planning Commission (RPC) and a Supervisors Inter-County Committee (SICC). These institutions were initially intended not to challenge but to facilitate the prevailing patterns of outward development and the proliferation of independent suburban communities, both of which placed escalating burdens on the central city of Detroit and black Detroiters in particular.

The RPC and SICC were merged to form SEMCOG just as the political transformations wrought by suburbanization, segregation and the African American freedom movement shook the foundations of the liberal political order in which regional planning and governance had evolved. As metropolitan politics grew increasingly racialized along city-suburb lines, and the federal government retreated from regional initiatives, SEMCOG survived the 1970s only by vowing to defend local control and eschewing a role in resolving issues of racial segregation and inequality, while accommodating the prevailing pattern of sprawl and disinvestment. When SEMCOG staff questioned this course, they were forced to back down in the face of opposition from the now-dominant suburban growth regime.

For advocates of regional planning and governance, there are sobering lessons to be drawn from the history of SEMCOG. In Detroit, institutions for regional planning and governance have failed to resolve the problems of sprawl and inequality, and in some respects exacerbated them, since these institutions are embedded within a larger political system that has been dominated by suburban development interests and defenders of racial and economic segregation. across city-suburb boundaries.

Beginning in the late 1960s, an emerging social and political focus in the field of planning attracted women participating in a long tradition of female-headed housing and community development activism. The activist and community-engaged roots of the first generation of feminist planning academics equipped them to develop new paradigms for planning theory and epistemology that centered participation and everyday experience, as well as spearheading community studio learning models in planning classrooms. At the same time, these feminist planners, architects, designers, and community development and housing advocates staked a claim in both activist and academic spaces for the important role of space, place, and the urban environment in feminist thought and practice.

While this dissertation demonstrates how the first feminist scholars carved out discursive and institutional space in the planning academy, it also reveals that this is not an entirely victorious story. In contrast to the initial group, comprised mostly of white women, this pool of interviewees consists primarily of BIPOC women whose stories provide a crucial intergenerational and intersectional perspective on shifting barriers and priorities that parallel broader trends in feminist movements. I present their perspectives on how these women were largely alienated from institutional gains in the 1990s, how their scholarship was marginalized, and how they have helped each other survive and thrive.

The work presented in this dissertation provides an analysis of clinical documentation that challenges the concepts and thinking surrounding missingness of data from clinical settings and the factors that influence why data are missing. It also foregrounds the critical role of clinical documentation as infrastructure for creating learning health systems (LHS) for pediatric rehabilitation settings. Although completeness of discrete data is limited, the results presented do not reflect the quality of care or the extent of unstructured data that providers document in other locations of the electronic health record (EHR) interface. While some may view imputation and natural language processing as means to address missingness of clinical data, these practices carry biases in their interpretations and issues of validity in results. The factors that influence missingness of discrete clinical data are rooted not just in technical structures, but larger professional, system level and unobservable phenomena that shape provider practices of clinical documentation. This work has implications for how we view clinical documentation as critical infrastructure for LHS, future studies of data quality and health outcomes research, and EHR design and implementation. To address these questions, a three-pronged approach is used to examine data completeness and the factors that influence missingness of discrete clinical data in an exemplar pediatric data learning network will be used. As a use-case, evaluation of EHR data completeness of gross motor function related data, populated by providers from 2015-2019 for children with cerebral palsy (CP), will be completed. Mixed methods research strategies will be used to achieve the dissertation objectives, including developing an expert-informed and standards-based phenotype model of gross motor function data as a task-based mechanism, conducting quantitative descriptive analyses of completeness of discrete data in the EHR, and performing qualitative thematic analyses to elicit and interpret the latent concepts that contribute to missingness of discrete data in the EHR. The clinical data for this dissertation are sourced from the Shriners Hospitals for Children (SHC) Health Outcomes Network (SHOnet), while qualitative data were collected through interviews and field observations of clinical providers across three care sites in the SHC system.

Housing and Transportation Costs and Affordability in U.S. Metropolitan Areas with Intra-Urban Rail Service.

In this dissertation, I examine housing and transportation costs and affordability in twenty-seven U.S. metropolitan areas with intra-urban rail systems. The objective of the study is to understand whether transit-rich neighborhoods, especially those served by rail, are affordable, with an emphasis on lower-income households. To this end, the dissertation adopts a multilevel approach to examining housing and transportation costs and affordability cross-sectionally and over time. Adopting a multilevel approach allows examining how neighborhood and metropolitan-level factors interact with one another and affect housing and transportation costs and affordability. Neighborhoods (i.e., block groups and census tracts) are classified based on their proximity to rail and their built environments to examine how costs vary between different types of neighborhoods. Finally, affordability is calculated based on metropolitan-wide income levels to assess whether housing and transportation costs are affordable to households at different income levels.

Housing in transit-oriented development is expensive, in part, due to the high levels of transit job accessibility these neighborhoods offer. However, housing costs in these neighborhoods are also high because of low long-run elasticities of housing . Despite an increase in the demand for compact walkable neighborhoods in recent decades, land-use regulations and local opposition direct denser development to rail-station areas. As a result, a higher of housing in transit-oriented development is associated with higher housing costs regionwide due to induced demand for these neighborhoods. At the same time, increasing the of housing in alternative pedestrian-friendly and transit-rich neighborhoods has a moderating effect on housing costs in transit-oriented development as it allows separating the demand for walkable urban form from the demand for transit accessibility. Hence, rather than focusing on developing housing only in transit-oriented development, efforts should focus on expanding the housing options in a diversity of neighborhood types both near and away from rail stations.

This dissertation investigates how and why the provision of urban parkland has changed over time, with different levels of government and different organizations in the for-profit and nonprofit sectors taking on different responsibilities. of any given park or plaza. It also matters for socioeconomic and racial equity at a metropolitan scale, influencing which kinds of spaces and facilities get funded, how many spaces and facilities are provided, where they are provided, for whom they are provided, and who sets these priorities.

Progressive Era social reformers partially addressed this deficiency by launching a recreation commission to open play facilities in working class neighborhoods. A city plan commission began buying land for parks and playfields in new subdivisions, and county, regional, state, and federal agencies opened scenic parks at their respective scales. Yet enduring racial disparities emerged. Few parks were added in the inner city, where most African Americans resided, and the recreation commission relied on private agencies to supplement its few racially integrated services. Not only were African Americans served by fewer, separate, and unequal facilities, the enduring lack of open space was later used to justify discriminatory plans for urban renewal.

In the late 1960s, urban rioting and organizing led to the reordering of park governance. Public agencies at all scales invested funds in urban recreation for the first time and new forms of public-private partnership emerged. As Detroit became a majority black city, politicians embraced these options selectively, soliciting revenue sharing but retaining local control of public space and keeping a focus on recreation. However, the municipal recreation system steadily declined as the local government lost revenue.

2010) for their success in attracting talent, increasing jobs, scaling startups, and transitioning regions into a high-tech economy. Built within the city and the urban-periphery alike, innovation districts point to a new spatial layout for capitalist production.

This dissertation is an in-depth comparative case study of five innovation districts: Boston, Detroit, Park Center (North Carolina), St. Louis, and Dublin (Ireland). In developing a robust definition of innovation districts than the strategy mobilized by growth coalitions, I situate the emergence of innovation districts and their extractive logics along a historic trajectory of capitalist production from manufacturing material goods to new forms of immaterial production. Relying on content analysis of primary documents, maps, legal statues, and architectural renditions, I document how the planning process for each innovation district encloses public space and lived experience within that space, relinquishing it for private profit.

Through detailed case studies I argue that economic developers and policymakers opportunistically used innovation district strategy to trigger real estate development after the 2008 2009 global financial crisis. However, in places with robust entrepreneurial ecosystems, supporters lost sight of the benefits of the innovation district as a support for startups and entrepreneurs in favor of established companies seeking proximity to talent. Using census data, I trace the changing demographic makeup of each innovation district from its date of inception to its current state to demonstrate how innovation district strategy contributes to the splintering of resources. Lastly, I conclude the dissertation with a theoretical discussion gesturing how innovation districts might exacerbate issues of precarity for the entrepreneur who sits at the center of this experimentation and is increasingly interpellated by a state-led ideology that eagerly encourages self-provisioning.

Accessible locations in a metropolitan region afford individuals who occupy them greater convenience to interact with activities distributed across the region. This convenience may translate into a range of economic benefits: reduced time-plus-money spending on travel to reach desirable destinations (termed here travel-cost savings), welfare gains resulting from enhanced social and economic interactions, consumer satisfaction due to a greater choice of activities to engage with, and so on. Yet many urban researchers have either implicitly or explicitly equated the benefits afforded by accessible locations to travel-cost savings (TCS), excluding other forms of benefits from consideration. An exclusive focus on TCS underestimates the value of accessibility and in many policy contexts constitutes a conceptual barrier to promoting accessibility-based planning practice and policymaking. For instance, observations of excess commuting are frequently used as evidence to refute the merits of job-housing balance strategies.

This three-paper dissertation challenges the TCS-based view of accessibility benefits. In the first paper, I trace the origin of the TCS-based view of accessibility to classic urban economic theories and review its application in residential location studies. To test the hypothesis that individuals value accessibility beyond the benefit of travel-cost savings, I develop residential location choice models for the Puget Sound and Southeast Michigan regions to examine whether transit accessibility remains a significant predictor of residential location choice after I control for all possible travel-cost savings associated with it. The results do not support a TCS-based view of accessibility benefits. Considering that only a small fraction of Americans regularly use transit, I conclude that it is probably the option value of transit access that attracts people to transit-accessible neighborhoods.

To facilitate accessibility-based planning policy implementation, the third paper empirically evaluates the relative importance of walkability, transit accessibility, and auto accessibility in residential location choice across three U.S. regions (Puget Sound, Southeast Michigan, and Atlanta). I find that in general, transit accessibility is a important determinant of residential location choice than walkability and auto accessibility. can be different from their actual choices because of housing constraints. This implies that if housing changes, estimates of accessibility preferences may change accordingly. This finding challenges the standard practice of land-use and transportation modeling, which forecasts future land-use patterns based on the presumed stability of historical or present estimates of accessibility preferences.

Walking, Transit Use and Urban Morphology in Walkable Urban Neighborhoods: An Examination of Behaviors and Attitudes in Seattle Neighborhoods.

Creating walkable cities has become an important planning objective over the last twenty years. Cities are also investing billions of dollars in public transit in an effort to reduce automobile dependence. to highlight the different purposes that walking and transit serve in different parts of a city. This dissertation, in part, serves as an empirical test of the theory of urban fabrics and explores the implications it has for planning practice as it relates to walkability and public transportation planning. The theory of urban fabrics argues that each city is a combination of three urban fabrics: walking, transit, and automobile fabrics. This is in contrast to current transportation planning which sees the city as having a single transportation network with multiple modes. Recognizing this approach as a limitation is important because each mode of transportation serves different purposes in different parts of a city and each urban fabric has different planning approaches associated with it.

I use a nested case study research design with mixed methods. Seattle and its urban core neighborhoods serve as my cases. Neighborhood mapping, pedestrian observations, a travel behavior survey, and interviews provide both quantitative and qualitative data to answer my research questions. pedestrian oriented infrastructure, transit infrastructure, and automobile infrast

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Recent Graduates

GRE score required at University of Michigan-Ann Arbor master's degree programs in Urban Studies and Affairs
  • GRE Required:  Register to view the details
  • Research assistantships:  Register to view the details
  • Teaching assistantships:  Register to view the details
  • Financial Aid: Register to view the details
New York University logo
Ranked as:  #32 in Best National University
Tuition:  $36,892 per year
Total Cost:  $73,784 * This tuition data is based on IPEDS. For the latest tuition amount, refer to the respective college websites.
State:  New York
Acceptance:  21.09%

Advance your understanding of and capacity to impact the theories and practices of global urban centers by pursuing an advanced degree in urban studies.

Public Administration for Public Service Leaders:ExecMPAWagner Graduate School of Public Service.

Public and Nonprofit Management and Policy:MPAWagner Graduate School of Public Service.

Public Policy Analysis:AdvCWagner Graduate School of Public Service.

Applied Urban Science and Informatics:AdvC, MSCenter for Urban Science and Progress.

Transportation Planning and Engineering:MS, PhDTandon School of Engineering.

Interested applicants may have the opportunity to participate in the NYU Abu Dhabi Global PhD Student Fellowship program or the NYU Shanghai doctoral study and research program.

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Policy and Systems

New York University admission requirements for graduate programs in Social Sciences and Studies
  • GRE Required:  Register to view the details
  • Research assistantships:  Register to view the details
  • Teaching assistantships:  Register to view the details
  • Financial Aid: Register to view the details
Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus logo
Ranked as:  #35 in Best National University
Tuition:  $31,334 per year
Total Cost:  $62,668 * This tuition data is based on IPEDS. For the latest tuition amount, refer to the respective college websites.
State:  Georgia
Acceptance:  21.34%

Public Management and Policy.

Minimum of 48 semester hours of graduate coursework must be completed.

The doctoral curriculum provides a rigorous grounding in urban theory and praxis and methodological training to analyze complex challenges emerging within urban environments and processes.

Submitted Online Application. Online applications must be submitted by the deadline. Paper applications are not available.

Application fee: A non-refundable fee of $50 is required for each application. This fee must be paid online by credit card.

Personal statement: The goal statement is your means of presenting yourself to the Graduate Admissions Committee. You should submit a short typed statement of personal and professional goals as they relate to the certificate or degree program you are seeking. Most applicants write two typed pages, summarizing their work experience, the reasons they have chosen the program, why they want to attend Georgia State and how the degree fits in with their career goals.

TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) or IELTS (International English Language Testing Systems) Academic scores (International applicants only): International applicants are required to submit official TOEFL or IELTS Academic scores.

Two letters of recommendation: Letters should be submitted through the online application.

The doctoral program is composed of the following:.

Students admitted to the program are typically offered a graduate assistantship with a minimum $22,000 yearly stipend and full tuition waiver.

Recognition of advanced urban theory in its various formulations and demonstration of the interdisciplinary nature of the field in relation to geography, sociology, economics and other disciplines.

Translational research skills (for example, the formulation of policy implications of urban research or analyses of urban policy impacts).

Urban Studies graduates go on to careers in fields including: academia, business, government, planning, law, public policy, market research, and consultancy.

The Public Sector Local authority departments (such as regeneration services, planning, economic and development) and state and federal government agencies.

NGOs and Philanthropy Philanthropic organizations, advocacy groups, foundations, and think tanks focusing on urban development, governance, and environmental issues.

Andrew Young School of Policy Studies 14 Marietta St Atlanta, GA 30303.

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Andrew Young School of Policy Studies - Urban Studies, P.h.D.

Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus admission requirements for graduate programs in Social Sciences and Studies
  • GRE Required:  Register to view the details
  • Research assistantships:  Register to view the details
  • Teaching assistantships:  Register to view the details
  • Financial Aid: Register to view the details
University of California-Irvine logo
Ranked as:  #42 in Best National University
Tuition:  $28,456 per year
Total Cost:  $56,912 * This tuition data is based on IPEDS. For the latest tuition amount, refer to the respective college websites.
State:  California
Acceptance:  29.92%

Ph.D. Program in Urban and Environmental Planning and Policy.

Today complex environmental, social and urban issues are best understood by researchers who can work across disciplinary boundaries, and who understand the relationship of research to action. The Urban and Environmental Planning and Policy (UEPP) doctoral program at UCI trains scholars in the analysis of social problems related to the built, natural, and institutional environments. The UEPP Ph.D. is based on the department internationally prominent research and teaching strengths in environmental policy, urban and community development and design.

The Ph.D. Program in Urban and Environmental Planning and Policy (UEPP) is a part of the Urban Planning and Public Policy (UPPP).

Note: The official name of our department changed in 2017 from Planning, Policy, and Design to Urban Planning and Public Policy. The name of the doctoral degree conferred is now Ph.D. in Urban and Environmental Planning and Policy.

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Ph.D. Program in Urban and Environmental Planning and Policy

University of California-Irvine admission requirements for graduate programs in Social Sciences and Studies
  • GRE Required:  Register to view the details
  • Research assistantships:  Register to view the details
  • Teaching assistantships:  Register to view the details
  • Financial Aid: Register to view the details
Texas A & M University-College Station logo
Ranked as:  #68 in Best National University
Tuition:  $22,743 per year
Total Cost:  $45,486 * This tuition data is based on IPEDS. For the latest tuition amount, refer to the respective college websites.
State:  Texas
Acceptance:  63.27%

Landscape Architecture Urban Planning Texas A M School of Architecture.

Communities need a diverse set of skilled professionals who can address rising challenges around technological innovation, sustainability, equity, and resilience. Explore these opportunities and graduate school through the Pathways Program in Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A M University. If you are interested in learning graduate school in these areas, our Pathways Program will showcase our Ph.D. Program in Urban and Regional Sciences to aid you in deciding your future path. Through a competitive, fully-funded workshop at Texas A M University, students will:.

Undertake mentoring activities to improve graduate school applications.

Draft a conference poster paper presentation to increase resume and academic exposure.

We invite diverse students from across the U.S. to apply for participation. Those who complete the program will be eligible to compete for a four-year fellowship to complete their Ph.D. program in our department.

Urban Studies and Affairs is funded by Texas A M University in partnership with the University of Texas at San Antonio, Prairie View A M University, Texas A M Corpus Christi, Texas Southern University and Morgan State University.

Doctoral students discuss research during a poster presentation.

Support in selecting and applying to graduate school.

Have or will receive a Bachelor or Masters degree by 2024.

Interest in graduate education in urban and regional sciences, planning, or landscape architecture.

Apply to Pathways Program Program Flyer Ph.D. Handbook.

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Texas A M Landscape Architecture Urban Planning

GRE score required at Texas A & M University-College Station master's degree programs in Urban Studies and Affairs
  • GRE Required:  Register to view the details
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  • Financial Aid: Register to view the details
University at Buffalo logo
Ranked as:  #103 in Best National University
Tuition:  $26,028 per year
Total Cost:  $52,056 * This tuition data is based on IPEDS. For the latest tuition amount, refer to the respective college websites.
State:  New York
Acceptance:  66.95%

The University at Buffalo invites applications from outstanding candidates interested in pursuing a career in research and teaching through its PhD program in urban and regional planning.

Attend an Online Session Virtual tours, Q A and Info Sessions every week.

The program, designed to nurture distinguished scholars and researchers, offers research and learning opportunities encompassing the field of urban and regional planning. Examples of some research areas where the program offers special capability, international distinction, and emphasis include:.

Advanced technology, information systems, and methods in planning.

Dissertation title: Hypocrisy in Housing: The Racist and Anti-Poor Undergirding of US Federal Housing Policy .

He develops new pathways for understanding the complex socio-economic and ethnic landscape of cities and spatial inequalities. He also explores equal access to resources from urban neighborhoods, focusing especially on the changes in gay neighborhoods and the LGBTQ+ population diffuses to other metropolitan locations.

Samina Raja is an international expert in planning and policy for sustainable food systems and healthy communities.

Robert Silverman applies urban planning to the study of the non-profit sector, the role of community-based organizations in urban neighborhoods, education reform, shrinking cities, and inequality in inner city housing markets.

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School of Architecture and Planning-UB - PhD in Urban and Regional Planning

University at Buffalo admission requirements for graduate programs in Social Sciences and Studies
  • GRE Required:  Register to view the details
  • Research assistantships:  Register to view the details
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Temple University logo
Ranked as:  #121 in Best National University
Tuition:  $24,236 per year
Total Cost:  $48,472 * This tuition data is based on IPEDS. For the latest tuition amount, refer to the respective college websites.
State:  Pennsylvania
Acceptance:  71.42%

In this 51-credit doctoral degree program, you will focus on geographic approaches to the study of urban and environmental processes and conditions in U.S. and international settings.

Graduates are prepared to conduct advanced scholarly research to prepare for careers in academia or professional research, or for professional work in nongovernment organizations, private firms and think tanks that focus on critical issues in the field.

The 51-credit Geography and Urban Studies PhD curriculum includes core coursework, four methodology courses, seven electives, a qualifying exam and a dissertation demonstrating original research that makes a valuable contribution to the field of Geography and Urban Studies.

The following staff members lead the Geography and Urban Studies Department.

Supplement your Geography and Urban Studies PhD coursework and enhance your graduate education experience through student clubs and organizations.

The Association of American Geographers is a nonprofit scientific and educational society aimed at advancing the understanding, study and importance of geography and related fields and is open to graduate and PhD students.

Complete graduate coursework, participate in internships or collaborate in research while immersing yourself in the culture, history and people of your host city.

Go back to Academics in Geography and Urban Studies PhD.

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Geography and Urban Studies PhD

GRE score required at Temple University master's degree programs in Urban Studies and Affairs
  • GRE Required:  Register to view the details
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What kind of scholarships are available for Graduate Programs in Urban Studies and Affairs?

We have 13 scholarships awarding up to $125,000 for Masters program in for Urban Studies and Affairs, targeting diverse candidates and not restricted to state or school-based programs.

Scholarship nameAmountCredibility
Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowships$30,000High
APF Wayne F. Placek Grants$9,000High
Intercollegiate Studies Institute Graduate Fellowships$5,000High
Native American Scholarships Fund$4,000High
Don Lavoie Fellowship$1,250High

Find scholarships and financial aid for Urban Studies and Affairs graduate programs

$500 $20000

How can I compare the Urban Studies and Affairs Graduate Programs?

Compare the GRE score requirements, admission details, credit requirements and tuition for the Master's Program, from 151 universities offering Graduate PHD/Doctoral Programs in Urban Studies and Affairs. Compare Graduate PHD/Doctoral Programs in Urban Studies and Affairs

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