1. MURP students will apply knowledge and skills to create more equitable and just communities and planning outcomes.
Students will demonstrate knowledge of historical, market and institutional forces that result in inequitable outcomes across race, gender, class and other dimensions of difference within communities. They will utilize planning practices that lead toward more just and equitable planning outcomes, including the analysis of distributional impacts of planning interventions, and identification, engagement and empowerment of marginalized communities through the planning process.
2. MURP students will apply knowledge and skills to create more sustainable communities and planning outcomes.
Students will demonstrate a working knowledge of sustainability as a community, social and environmental goal, and a critical appreciation of its strengths and weaknesses as an organizing principle for contemporary planning practice. Their engagement with sustainability principles will include applications and practices at household, community, city, regional and global scales. Through their work, students will critically assess the potential and pitfalls for scaling up local solutions for addressing issues whose native geography occurs at larger scales, including global.
3. MURP students will understand planning as a political act and an act of intervention on behalf of a more desired, collective view of the future.
Students will demonstrate an understanding of planning as a practice for making change in the outcomes of trends likely to frustrate collectively held aims for community sustainability, justice, and quality of life. Through their engagement of planning processes, they will gain first-hand experience with the political nature of planning, and the ways in which political processes pose both challenges for planning and offer the only feasible means for redirecting resource allocation to achieve plan goals.
4. MURP students will understand planning as a reflective practice, and engage in plan making as reflective practitioners.
Students will demonstrate an understanding of planning as a learning practice for both community members and planners, and reflective practice as the means for ensuring that this learning is transparent, collective, and accomplished through honest, critical self-assessment. Reflective practice will be engaged as a public process to add resilience to plans and legitimacy to plan outcomes.
5. MURP students will assess forces impacting human settlements and interconnections among systems.
Students will demonstrate knowledge of the market forces and failures, natural environmental factors, and institutional factors influencing urbanization processes and outcomes, and assess how those forces are likely to change in the future. They will demonstrate understanding of the relationship between global processes and local outcomes, and of interconnections between physical (natural and built), economic, and social dimensions of the urban environment. They will demonstrate how each influences the context and need for planning within particular places and communities.
6. MURP students will assess the history, theory and institutional context of planning as a field.
Students will demonstrate knowledge of the history of planning as a field and a profession. This involves understanding theories of planning, including the potential and limitations of planning as a means for communities to achieve desired futures. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the legal and institutional context of planning, and analyze how it varies across places and has changed over time.
7. MURP students will design planning processes, make plans, and create strategies for plan implementation.
Students will demonstrate an understanding of each element of the planning process, beginning with the analysis of planning problems and application of appropriate plan types. They will analyze planning institutions and stakeholders and their power and interests within a planning problem. Students will utilize effective and inclusive public engagement techniques, develop future-oriented scenarios of planning actions and outcomes based on planning knowledge, and apply plan implementation principles and tools.
8. MURP students will collect and analyze information relevant to plan making.
Students will collect data and information relevant to planning problems through appropriate primary and secondary sources, and utilize quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques to translate data and information into planning knowledge. This includes the utilization of spatial information and analysis (i.e., GIS), design analysis techniques, and equity impact analyses.
9. MURP students will communicate plans and planning knowledge effectively and persuasively.
Students will write memos and reports, make oral presentations, and display information at a professional-quality level. This involves taking complex and often technical material and rendering it understandable and persuasive in a manner appropriate to diverse audiences.
10. MURP students will work effectively in collaborative and team-based contexts.
Students will establish practices for organizing and completing planning tasks and fostering collective decision-making in a collaborative and professional manner. This includes the ability to negotiate and mediate conflict and demonstrate leadership.