The Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University provides a dynamic, rigorous, and supportive context for addressing the most urgent planning questions of our time.
Our faculty and students plan for a sustainable future, confront inequality, transform the built environment, engage communities, and re-imagine planning by reflecting on theories, practices, contradictions, and politics. At CRP, the next generation of planners and urbanists hone critical disciplinary planning and urban studies skills through a wide selection of courses offered by the department, the college, and Cornell, a world-class Ivy League university.
Our Priorities
Place-Based Collaborative Research
We work closely with communities, planners, and scholars across places and disciplines to exchange ideas and develop data-driven theories and practices that shape public discourse and engage critical social issues.
Justice, Equity, Sustainability
We study the built environment, governance, policymaking, and everyday life to address justice, equity, and sustainability in planning for infrastructure, affordable housing, and climate adaptation.
Connecting Multiple Scales
We embrace theories and practices that draw connections across neighborhood, city, regional, and global scales to shape cities and regions now and for the future.
Global Practice, Local Impact
We work in cities and communities across the Global North and South to bring together different ways of teaching, learning, and practicing that create new possibilities in planning.
"Local government is ubiquitous. It is usually pragmatic, interested in key environmental, economic, social or political challenges, a potential actor for community development. This is why I find working at this scale across the world so interesting."
"I'm inspired by community-based and grassroots movements whose embodied knowledge and lived experience provide deep and powerful ideas for change. I seek to find ways to connect their ideas with pragmatic, implementable policy reforms and projects."
"Books opened my imagination and shaped my intellectual growth, addressing my insatiable curiosity. My interest in historic preservation stems from linkages between ideas, activities, and objects throughout the world."
"Fascinated with urban form and spatial patterns since I was a little kid, I became curious about the institutional, cultural, and socio-economic processes that produced very different urban and regional landscapes."
Degree Programs
Urban and Regional Studies (B.S. URS)
Four-year, undergraduate Bachelor of Science in Urban and Regional Studies
Two-year, professional, accredited Master of Regional Planning
Two-year Master of Science in Regional Science
Historic Preservation Planning (M.A. HPP)
Two-year Master of Arts in Historic Preservation Planning
City and Regional Planning (Ph.D. CRP)
Doctoral degree in City and Regional Planning
Doctoral degree in Regional Science
Landscape Architecture (M.R.P. / M.L.A.)
Dual master's degree in Regional Planning and Landscape Architecture
Real Estate (M.R.P. / M.P.S. RE)
Dual master's degree in Regional Planning and Real Estate
AAP Engagement Impact Grant Virtual Informational Sessions
Attend an informational session about the AAP Engagement Impact Grants available to faculty and students in spring 2026.
Thomas J. Campanella: Designing the American Century — How Two Cornellians Changed the Face of Urban America
CRP Professor Thomas J. Campanella highlights how Cornell-trained landscape architects Gilmore D. Clarke and Michael Rapuano transformed the modern American metropolis through visionary public works.
Sainan Lin: From Redevelopment to Co-Production — Urban Renewal and Community Governance in China
Guest Professor Sainan Lin examines China's shift from state-led redevelopment to collaborative urban renewal, using Wuhan’s Jianghanli Community as a case study.
Erin Benay: Sharing the Same Park Bench — Art as Urban Development in the Rust Belt
Attend a lecture with art historian Erin Benay on how murals shape community, memory, and social change through public art and activism.
US Communities Are Getting Older — And More Livable
CRP Professor Mildred Warner and Xue Zhang (M.S. RS '16, Ph.D. RS '19) lead a national analysis showing that US communities are becoming more age-friendly, with AARP-network localities achieving the greatest improvements in livability, transportation, and civic engagement as the nation's population grows older.
Cornell AAP to Launch First New York City-based High School Summer Program
The College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP) is adding a new summer intensive for high schoolers interested in studying the collective aspirations, methodologies, and processes involved in the design of cities.
Cities Made a Bet on Millennials — But Forgot One Key Thing
Vox: CRP Professor Mildred Warner argues that exclusionary zoning and political resistance have prevented cities from building family-friendly housing, driving millennials with children away and undermining urban stability.
Monday, November 24, 2025Iran's Capital Is Moving. The Reason Is an Ecological Catastrophe
Scientific American: CRP Associate Professor Linda Shi comments on the political motivations behind relocating Iran's capital, noting that Tehran's severe water shortages stem not only from drought but also from decades of mismanagement and land subsidence, which the government is now using to justify moving the capital to the Makran coast.
Friday, November 21, 2025Ulysses Unveils First Community Park Draft Designs Following Public Survey
Tompkins Weekly: The Town of Ulysses unveiled two draft designs for a new 15-acre community park, developed with resident input and a Cornell Design Connect team featuring AAP students Reiley Cahill-Steeg (B.S. URS '28), Maple Shang (B.S. URS '29), Jonah Yarbrough (B.S. URS '28), Upasana Patgiri (M.R.P. '27), and Brandon Chen (B.Arch. '28).
Tuesday, November 18, 2025The Promise of the Bronx River Parkway
The New York Times: CRP Professor Thomas J. Campanella examines the transformation of the Bronx River Parkway from a scenic early-20th-century drive into a prototype for modern highways, revealing how its design and legacy reflect broader histories of social exclusion, urban inequity, and the need to reimagine infrastructure as a vehicle for restorative justice.
Sunday, November 9, 2025
Embodying Justice in the Built Environment: Just and Equitable Land Use Transitions in Advancing Carbon Neutrality
Felix Heisel, Jocelyn Poe , Jennifer Minner
The Reparative Praxis, Just Places, and Circular Construction labs, and other partners, have released a workbook that provides a framework for centering justice in land use planning for a carbon-neutral future.
Policy Solutions for the Climate and Housing Crisis in New York City
CRP faculty Linda Shi coauthored a report including strategies to address New York City's dual housing and climate crises through a land use framework, expanded retrofit programs, community wealth measures, and funding for affordable, climate-resilient housing. Supported by the Atkinson Center for Sustainability.
Bridging the Digital Divide in the US: Planning Innovative State and Local Approaches
CRP Professor Mildred Warner's new open-access book, coedited with Natassia Bravo (Ph.D. CRP '25) and Duxixi (Ada) Shen (M.R.P. '24), presents a multilevel governance framework examining how local leaders leverage policy opportunities and community resilience to address inequities in broadband infrastructure. The USDA and the Pew Charitable Trusts partially funded the project.
Student Focus
