Master of Urban Design University of Virginia School of Architecture

With a mission-driven interdisciplinary group of faculty rooted in the Departments of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Urban and Environmental Planning, and Architectural History, our Urban Design curriculum addresses the most pressing social, environmental, and spatial challenges confronting society in the 21st century — challenges such as climate change and environmental degradation, demographic shifts and racial injustices, as well as technological transformations.

Through our collaborations, integrated with the School's Next Cities Institute, these challenges are addressed through radical concepts and transformative methodologies that allow us to not only envision more sustainable future cities, but to shape new practices that constitute the dynamic conditions of the urban. Our work engages the ways in which complex, often competing, forces come together in the spatial structure of the city. Spatial literacy and active participation are critical to recognizing that the spaces of urbanism are spaces of citizenry — where struggles and potentials collide and where we, collectively, enact our capacities to make a better world for all.

Embracing an interdisciplinary and multi-scalar approach, and utilizing applied design research and theoretical investigations, our cross-departmental Urban Design curriculum is committed to the education of the next generation of design leaders and change-makers. In examining a multiplicity of scales and diverse spatial conditions of urbanity, from public space to private development, and from the social to the ecological, we help designers and planners to become critical thinkers and strategic agents in support of urban sustainability, social justice, and environmental resilience.