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Master of Regional Planning

CRP field trip to Boston, fall 2010

First-year M.R.P. and M.A. HPP students visit Fenway Park during a field trip to Boston, fall 2010.

 

M.R.P. in City and Regional Planning

If you are passionate about creating better communities or preserving our built environment, Cornell can help you to transform your passion into effective action. We help you to understand the structural forces that cause social inequity, environmental damage, and economic decline. We also provide the tools, techniques, and strategies you will need as a planner to design more equitable, vibrant, beautiful, and sustainable places.

Our students, who come from all over the United States and around the world, have pursued a wide range of undergraduate majors; most have also had real-world planning experience either during or after college. They bring to Cornell, and to the wider world, compassion, curiosity, and commitment.

"I was drawn to planning because of the wonderful array of tools and techniques it uses to address critical urban questions -- tools that include conflict mediation, GIS mapping, community organizing, and demographic analysis." Andy Rumbach, M.R.P. ’07

Cornell's renowned city and regional planning program has a solid curriculum that combines theory and practice in both domestic and international realms. CRP offers a rich educational environment composed of flexible degree programs, a distinguished faculty with extensive research and outreach agendas, engaged students with active organizations, ample support facilities, and a busy calendar of events.

Another valuable component of this program is its rich international perspective. More than a third of CRP graduate students come from outside the United States — from Asia, Europe, Africa, and Latin America, and these students bring a lively range of viewpoints and cultural backgrounds to planning issues.

Planning education is a collaborative endeavor: there is a strong sense of cooperation among the faculty and great openness to student input. Through almost unparalleled access to internships and workshops, students test their ideas, research, and coursework in practice, while bringing real world problems back into the classroom for critical examination.

CRP's mission is defined by:

  • A deep appreciation of the interdependence of theory and practice
  • A commitment to sustainable and contextually appropriate action
  • An emphasis on intellectual and practical questions of social justice and equity
  • A strategy for understanding and creating place through study and practice in land use, design, economic development, historic preservation, and governance

Planning here is a joint enterprise of students and faculty
The M.R.P. attracts students who wish to build a career in planning. It also attracts mid-career professionals who have experience. Cornell has conferred more than 1,200 M.R.P. degrees.

Each of the 25 to 30 students admitted each year creates an individualized program, building on the department's core curriculum and selecting elective courses to reflect personal goals.

 

Learn more about the M.R.P. Program