FAQ

While this program draws on urban planning and urban design, it is not a traditional urban planning or urban design program. Instead, the program examines complex urban ecologies by bringing together different disciplines that interact in the production of urban space, including urban policy, planning, design, activism, and community practice. The MS in Design and Urban Ecologies calls into question urban processes and practices related to housing, public space and the commons, food systems, health, education, livelihoods, transportation, community development, urban governance, and the environment as well as to the ever-changing spatial, economic, and social infrastructures that make up our cities. Dialectical analysis and understandings are encouraged and central to the program.

Students identify critical and often problematic issues within the urban environment as well as the wider urban ecologies in order to investigate possibilities for systematic change within different spatial, political, and institutional urban frameworks. Students employ design as a medium and an instrument to address such systemic urban challenges and to catalyze change. Using the notion of “urban ecologies,” students employ design to translate and communicate complex urban processes to those being directly affected by them, and at the same employ design as a medium through which actors on the ground acquire the agency to (re)shape their communities, neighborhoods, and their cities. Rather than seeing New York City as an abstract object of study, the MS in Design and Urban Ecologies students engage with agencies, organizations, neighborhoods and communities throughout the city with the aim of immersing students in real-world urban questions, processes, and transformations.

Studio courses provide hands-on and collaborative research and design experience throughout the program. The first studio course offers an introduction to New York City by engaging students in long-term projects with local community partners in a specific neighborhood. Through a number of urban investigations focused on different aspects of the selected neighborhood, this studio provides a comprehensive understanding of agents acting at both the macro and micro levels and affecting the area in question. Students propose design strategies to address pressing issues affecting the neighborhood’s communities, be it housing, education, public space, or mobilities.

The second studio course addresses larger issues affecting areas such as a city borough or a waterfront and offers more flexibility to students in deciding which topic to address and which community partners to work with. While Studio 1 provides a structured research and design framework, Studio 2 is more open in terms of direction. During the second year, Studio 3 offers students a platform to start their own research and design project. Students are guided by faculty during this process and have the freedom to decide on the place, topic, theoretical framework, methodology, partners, and design approach of their project. The final studio, Thesis, is the continuation of Studio 3. During the last semester, students are guided by faculty in developing their thesis project, which should include detailed research and actionable design strategies for urban interventions involving local communities and institutions. Students are required to design ways to test and implement their design strategies.

During the first year, many required studio projects are based in New York City and the surrounding areas. We have worked with our community- and other partners in Sunset Park, Bushwick, South Bronx, The Rockaways, Brooklyn Queens Expressway corridor (BQE), the MTA Line 7 corridor (from Hudson Yards to Flushing), and more. Our elective courses, such as Public Space Lab, Right to the City, Cooperative Cities, or Urban Infrastructures, offer weekly walking tours of the City, where students explore and research a wide variety of topics including public space and the commons, homelessness, transportation, recreation, environmental degradation, and housing cooperatives.

In the second year of study, students' research and design projects may be developed outside of New York City, depending on the interest of the individual student. For instance, international students may choose to work on a project related to their home countries or towns. In addition, the program sponsors a course, Global Urban Studio Intensive, in which students travel abroad and work with our partners in places where we have ongoing work and a degree of expertise in local, situated knowledge. Students gain experience in particular urban conditions, topics, and practices in cities around the world. Examples include Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen, New Delhi, Mumbai, Quito, Venice, and Rio de Janeiro.

During the first year, group work is encouraged, particularly in the studio courses. In other courses, students may be organized into teams to take advantage of the wide range of experience and skills offered by each student. Individual work is more common in lecture courses and during the second year of the program, although some thesis projects have been developed by two or more students.

Travel opportunities within the program are available in the form of individual exchange agreements, graduate student travel funds, and other possibilities through centers within The New School. Students interested in traveling for their research may also work with the Tishman Environment and Design Center and the India China Institute at The New School. Both of these groups offer fellowships, travel grants, and scholarships to contribute to students' scholarly work. The program also offers a 3 credit Global Urban Studio Intensive elective that provides students with a two-week international travel component to their coursework (see above).