A recent national study of graduate programs in urban planning has ranked MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning the best in the nation.Â
Out of 94 departments assessed in North America, MIT's department was also ranked number one for international development, for housing, social and community development, for economic development and for technology; number two for real estate; and number three for environmental planning, for land use planning, for transportation planning and for urban design. In other words, the department as a whole and every program in it have been ranked among the top three in the country.
Planetizen, a public-interest information exchange for the urban planning, design and development community, announced the ranking.
During the fall of 2006--in association with the Oregon opinion research firm Davis, Hibbits and Midghall--Planetizen surveyed hundreds of professionals, educators and students to gather information about what makes a good planning school and to find the schools that meet those criteria.
The results of their research have been published in the "Planetizen 2007 Guide to Graduate Urban Planning Programs," the first such independent ranking to be produced in North America. The 150-page guide features a comprehensive directory of 94 graduate urban planning programs in the United States and Canada and ranks the top 25 planning schools in the United States, as well as the top programs in 12 specialty areas.Â
After MIT, the top 10 programs in the ranking include Berkeley, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Harvard, Penn, UCLA, Cornell, Rutgers, USC and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on November 8, 2006 (download PDF).
