Master of City Design Program
OVERVIEW
Diverse Faculty. Community Driven Design Studios. Interdisciplinary Research. Inclusive Community. Global City.
Whether you want to build on an existing design degree, expand competencies in urban planning, transition into the field of urban design, or advance your career to the next level - the Master of City Design (MCD) provides exceptional professional, research, and teaching preparation, presents opportunities for collaboration and community engagement with diverse stakeholders, offers networking with global thought leaders in the design field, and deepens your knowledge to be a change agent in a rapidly urbanizing world.
As we define our urban future, the United Nations estimates that 2.5 billion more people will be living in cities by 2050, which translates to two out of every three people. Cities are critically important to understand, and Chicago, the third largest city in the U.S. at the center of the Midwest and on the edge of the Great Lakes fresh water basin, forms the perfect setting for this innovative program.
Our next enrollment cycle is for fall 2025
Learn more at https://cuppa.uic.edu/academics/upp/upp-programs/master-of-city-design/
ABOUT MASTER OF CITY DESIGN PROGRAM
About UIC College of Urban Planning and Policy, City Design Program
The Master of City Design (MCD) program is offered by the Department of Urban Planning and Policy (UPP). UPP’s mission is to conduct radical and engaged scholarship that contributes to promoting just, resilient, and livable neighborhoods, cities, and urban regions. The MCD program extends this mission through its distinctive and intensive studio-based socio and ecological curriculum at the project, city-wide, and subregion-scale urban design promoting just cities.
The Master of City Design (MCD) is an intensive graduate degree focuses on the built environment and addresses pressing racial, spatial, and climatic inequality issues in Chicago. Students learn how to plan for the physical design of cities using spatial and systems thinking that combines analyses of places, meaningful engagement with diverse communities, ecological needs of the changing climate and non- human species, design knowledge across scales, and justice-centered approaches to city design. Hands-on field based studio learning provides immersive exposure to integrated, interdisciplinary design approaches and professional practice in urban places across Chicago. Our diverse and interdisciplinary curriculum integrates urban design with climate science, community economic development, environmental planning, public policy, and transportation equity. This approach leverages UIC’s location in the center of a major global city where MCD addresses critical challenges such as: climate change, housing crises, and spatial and racial inequality through reparative approaches that redress harm and promote just, resilient, and inclusive communities.
Our approach to city design
COMMUNITY DRIVEN DESIGN
MCD provides an immersive learning experience through field-based studios, design charrettes, and engagement with local place-based organizations, progressive design and planning firms, and institutional civic engagement partners. Working collaboratively, students codesign community engagement to inform plan making, and built environment design solutions from the ground up.
Rewilding Nature
MCD studios look at issues holistically, foregrounding coexistence. The planet’s environmental challenges are reflected in the everyday lives of humans and other species in neighborhoods, cities, and urban regions. Systems analysis is critical to developing integrative, inclusive, and adaptable design thinking for Chicago’s future. Students research strategies that reestablish healthy urban ecosystems and habitats, reconnect fragmented prairies and waterways, and pursue a balance of humans and nature.
Improving Waterways
Restoring Wetlands
AFFORDABLE HOUSING AND INCLUSIVE COMMUNITIES REPARATIVE PLANNING
MCD offers curriculum that examines the affordable housing crisis and aims to offer design and policy solutions that support healthy and inclusive communities, collective land ownership, community wealth building, equitable transit oriented development, and development without displacement.
MCD approaches critical urban issues of racial and spatial inequality through a reparative lens that aims to redress harm of racist planning practices through racial equity, redistributive and just city design, spatial reparations, and cultural inclusion and curation.
to an urban ecotope?
An Interdisciplinary Approach to City Design
Studying city design in the manner proposed by this program provides students with educational opportunities to pursue design thinking and spatial plan-making in a variety of local contexts, along with meaningful engagement with diverse communities that only a great city like Chicago and a leading research university like UIC can offer. Our interdisciplinary approach draws from a diverse set of faculty, practitioners, and partners with expertise in architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, environmental planning, cultural planning, urban planning, climate science, and economics. Each studio is curated and co-designed with community partners using a systems thinking design approach that is intersectional and addresses a multiplicity of urban issues.
Many complex urban issues that Chicago is currently facing will be researched, including:
• Defining resilient ecological systems
• Planning for an inclusive central city
• Promoting densification and infill development
• Reimagining brownfield industrial sites
• Planning for climate-readiness
• Investing in Chicago’s neighborhoods
• Advocating for mixed use zoning
• Identifying tactical and grassroots urban solutions
• Integrating the needs of wildlife in an urban context
• Integrating reparative planning practice
This intensive approach is complemented through direct involvement in instruction of staff from well-established research units in CUPPA such as the Great Cities Institute, the Natalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement, and the Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement. These research units maintain extensive linkages with a wide variety of planning actors ranging from local community organizations and advocacy groups, regional agencies, and global organizations. In this respect, the overall curriculum of the MCD degree is specifically designed to address employment demands for urban design professionals equipped with interdisciplinary knowledges, spatial analysis and community engagement skills in a rapidly developing professional landscape driven by the growth of urban areas and megaregions worldwide.
there is still time to rewild
How we work together
COLLABORATION:
We are committed to fostering a collaborative learning environment that values diverse backgrounds and perspectives with the goal to build cultural competence, environmental sensibilities and intercultural dialogue. We emphasize a model of teamwork and collaboration based on traditions of urban planning over individualized learning approaches. Our program will enable students to work in a range of professional studio settings with diverse people, prioritizing consensus building, co-existence with planetary ecosystems, and collective learning.
How we work with stakeholders
COMMUNITY:
We work with a range of community, design, and institutional partners to ensure that projects and plans incorporate the lived experience and knowledge of those that live, work, and play in the neighborhoods we engage with. Our students will build skills in the craft of community engagement via place based built environment solutions.
How we approach city design
DESIGN THINKING:
We encourage a systems thinking approach to city design. The integrative urban design approach demands this generation of designers/urban thinkers to have basic literacy in other fields, especially when facing problems arising from social and racial inequality and climate resiliency. These problems are systems problems, and isolated solutions alone will be business as usual. The challenges of the 21st century require students to act with new toolkits, inter-sectional and inter-scalar frameworks.
How we visualize urban design plans
VISUALIZATION SKILLS:
Students will build proficiency in a variety of programs such as ArcGIS, Adobe Suite, Sketchup, Rhino, and Grasshopper to build high quality visualization skills. Our courses will provide expertise in spatial analysis and graphic visualization, which will prepare students to work in the various sectors of planning or within the fields of urban design, and landscape architecture.
How we tell community stories
ACCESSIBLE COMMUNICATION:
Students are encouraged to work together in teams rather than as individuals and will learn to communicate their ideas through a variety of visual representation methods, tools and media to convey the vision and impact of urban design proposals in an accessible way –that is understandable by diverse stakeholders including the public, policymakers, developers and to the architecture and engineering fields. Visualizations include parti diagrams, maps, diagrams and plan and section renderings and perspective renderings leveraging a range of computer programs to aid in various settings and audiences. Students will also learn storytelling methods to communicate how designs respond to local needs and address community concerns.
Curriculum & Schedule
The program operates as a one-year (Fall, Spring and 4-Week summer session) graduate program accepting students in the Fall semester. To earn the Master of City Design, students must complete all the academic and studio course requirements as well as sufficient number of electives to reach 36 credit hours in
• Reduction in cost for master’s program
• Matriculate into a
or enter the
Core City Design Courses
Theories of Urban Design
In Theories of City Design students explore various scholarly traditions and theories, along with their critical counterparts, to understand the development of the city design field from multiple perspectives. Simultaneously, they learn to apply these theories and ideas to analyze, deconstruct, and critically engage with contemporary urban issues and pressing challenges. By integrating abstract concepts with ‘real-world’ immersive experiences, students can connect specific trends in modern urban design with the field’s historical development. In a truly intersectional fashion, the course structure challenges exclusive pedagogies by broadening the scope of topics and materials to foster global comparative thinking and include underrepresented scholarship.
Global Urbanization and Planning
This course focuses on various aspects of urban development and planning in cities within developing countries. It begins with analyzing common challenges in these metropolitan regions, examining settlement patterns and urban systems across different areas. The goal is to establish a broad understanding of planning concepts, urban trends, and terminology relevant to the rapidly expanding cities worldwide. Attention is also given to specific issues in representative cities from regions such as Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Key topics include water and sanitation, health, transportation and infrastructure, historic preservation, urban redevelopment pressures, disaster risk reduction, and housing.
Urban Spatial Analysis and Visualization
In this Lab, students explore visualization tools and skills for digital modeling and exploration of diverse urban contexts and local places using maps, images, spatial data and software, such as 2D and 3D GIS, 3D Max, CityEngine, Rhino3D and SketchUp, through applied projects focused upon spatial analysis and visualization for urban design.
Regional
Green Roof Masterplan
Reimagined Infrastructure
Waterway Adjacencies
Opportunity areas for green roof development and financial and tax incentive recommendations. Opportunities and challenges along the river corridor. Proposed landscapes and design recommendations.
Re-imagined infrastrucure connections along abandoned and exisitng railway corridors and utility lines.
City Design Studios
Urban Edge Studio
Explores the physical design, spatial interventions, and redevelopment efforts in Chicago neighborhoods. Students comprehensively explore urban communities to understand historical patterns of segregation and disinvestment and current conditions to address critical issues of racial and spatial inequality such as design deserts, gentrification and displacement, and infrastructural repair. An important aspect
of this process is incorporating the lived experiences of community stakeholders in the plan making process to ground design work that centers the needs of existing residents. Students work collaboratively with community partners to co-design the plan making process and design proposals through relevant engagement strategies.
Madison for Everyone: A Design Framework for Madison Street in Oak Park (Fall 2022)
The context for this studio was a 1.5 miles-long stretch of Madison Street between Harlem and Austin, in Oak Park, IL. While the street contains many vacant parcels, it has also witnessed several recent developments in the form of multi-story retail, mixed-income residential units, and office space. The studio developed an urban design framework plan as the link between
current conditions and a future vision. Through multiple site visits and engagements with community members and decisionmakers, detailed analysis was translated into tactical and policy initiatives, as well as ambitious design concepts aimed towards the community’s short- and long-term enhancement.
Proposed Concept
Sectional Perspective When implemented alongside the proposed street redesign, these building typologies help stimulate an active, mixed-use, dense urban character, while respecting the existing parcel sizes and not overshadowing neighboring residential areas.
Bridging People and Place: A Design Framework for Cermak Road (Fall 2023)
This effort focused on a 1.3 miles-long stretch of Cermak Road within Berwyn, IL. Building upon previous planning efforts students developed an urban design framework plan for Area Redevelopment illustrating current conditions and future vision for the corridor’s potential development. The studio was guided by the following questions –What help can the studio render to improve the place in terms of advancing the economic base and enhancing
CERMAK CORRIDOR Aerial
visitor footfall? How can we help align existing place character, community identity and cultural prerogatives? What useful lessons and insights can be drawn from this studio effort for other similar places in Chicago that seek to improve their main streets? To answer these questions studio redesigned the right-of-way, established a new urban core with a community gateway and converts the Cermak corridor from an urban periphery into a community link.
Great Cities Studio
The Great Cities Studios have tackled the issue of climate adaptation through Chicago’s iconic urban design settlement patterns, questioning whether the city’s 19th- and 20th-century systems can accommodate the demands of new climatic and environmental crises. These studios have proposed flexible solutions to downtown flash flooding through a Cloudburst plan and have reimagined the existing arterial systems and ecological corridors on the South
Side of Chicago through new “Overrides.” Students have developed new literacies in climate and environmental sciences, prompting a reimagining of the traditional toolkits used in classic urban design paradigms. Parks, street systems, and shoreline treatments have been examined as elements of the city, with the aim of understanding how new patterns of co-existence could emerge through repurposing.
Grant Park
Chicago Knee Deep: Making Room for Water Resiliency in Chicago (Spring 2022)
This studio focused on making room for pluvial floods between Lake Michigan and the Chicago River in downtown Chicago. Resiliency, urban repurposing, and adaptation are framing narratives, combined with the interest in making Chicago’s Central City a more inclusive place. Street systems, parks, and other organizing elements, such as surface parking, were reimagined to adapt to new flash flood patterns.
Chicago’s New Nature: An Ecological Override Plan (Spring 2023)
This studio focused on the Rights of Nature and tomorrow’s tools for climate adaptation in Chicago. Repurposing is needed to mitigate climate change effects. The spring 2023 Great Cities Studio interpreted this charge as a series of “overrides” across a large district
Waterways Adjacencies
Waterways Adjacencies
The Chicago region’s rivers, characterized by expansive floodplains, diverse
and soft flexible edges, have been transformed
of south Chicago, including the south branch of the Chicago River and the Calumet River corridors. Students designed new prototypes to connect, adapt, and protect communities and ecosystems of the South side of Chicago.
Green Roof Network
An elevated network of connected green space for people and wildlife
Our comprehensive ecological green roof plan prioritizes the identification of suitable areas for green roof installations, such as industrial zones, institutional buildings, and commercial buildings. To ensure maximum coverage, we set targets for the percentage of eligible buildings that should be covered by green roofs while considering their potential benefits, including reducing the urban heat island effect, improving air
quality, and managing stormwater runoff. To encourage the adoption of green roofs, we propose financial incentives for property owners, such as grants or tax incentives. Through these efforts, the ecological green roof plan will contribute significantly to Chicago’s sustainable and resilient future.
and straightened
designed for industry and urban development. While modern rivers in the region typically see high rates of pollution and toxicity within the river bed, efforts to
and
The Chicago region’s rivers, characterized by expansive floodplains, diverse riparian zones, and soft flexible edges, have been transformed into channelized and straightened canals designed for industry and urban development. While modern rivers in the region typically see high rates of pollution and toxicity within the river bed, efforts to clean and restore the river have created opportunities for further ecological restoration. We plan to expand on these efforts with nature-based solutions and increased public access to the waterways.
the river have created opportunities for further ecological restoration. We plan to expand on these efforts with nature-based solutions and increased public access to the waterways.
safeguard communities
14,000+ acres 50+ miles of roofs reimagined as green roofs of connected green roofs forming an aerial green network
The Green Roof Flyway
Infrastructure Connections
systems area. Many Infrastructure, today dissect to restitch the right to railways for wildlife
1,805 miles 8,836 acres
755,540 people 4,750 acres underutilized railroad right-of-way of freight and passenger railroad tracks added to public open space through reutilization of
IndustrialArea
755,540 people 4,750 acres
1,805 miles 8,836 acres
Think Like a City: A Framework for Remaking Places (Spring 2024)
This studio focused on the long-range future of the Illinois Medical District, a large, 600-acre medical district, two miles west of downtown Chicago. Students researched the +100 year evolution of the district, its traditional land use patterns, the urban renewal shortcomings of the mid twentieth century, and the identification of strategies for the next 50 years to repair and strengthen the role this District plays in Chicago. Students collaborated closely with the Illinois Medical District client team to develop a collection of strategies, which redefined the settings for the existing medical institutions and medical schools while exploring the blurring of the edges of the district with surrounding, established neighborhoods. Special emphasis was placed on the transformation of the district into a more mixed, livable, community serving environment, which integrates placemaking and reparative planning.
Chicago Charrette
Street as the ‘Neighborhood Main Street’
MCD summer capstone studio aka ‘Chicago Charrette’ offers a hands-on field-based immersive environment for learning the craft of community engagement at the intermediate urban scale. Working with seasoned scholars, professional practitioners, engaged residents, and community organizers, students learn how to conceive purposeful participatory strategies inviting the engagement of diverse place-based communities for co-creating meaningful design solutions. Students pay special attention to learn intercultural aspects
Calle 35 como la ‘Calle Principal del Barrio’ 第35街作为 ‘主社区街道’
of community-based planning and design practice, exploring how planners can work better with diverse communities in culturally competent ways. Throughout the course, we explore and employ a broad spectrum of public engagement strategies including community surveys, pop ups, design charrette, focus groups, and community conversations, - leading finally to a co- created plan showcasing the ideal of community empowerment via meaningful design.
35th Street Reimagined: Codesigning Neighborhood Improvements with McKinley Park Neighbors
design concept conceptualizes 35th
McKinley Park’s bustling street concentrations of activity at certain intersections from Archer to Ashland. concept integrates elements of art-activated alleyways, a linear park, sidewalks, community spaces, pedestrian crossings, and food trucks. strategic additions can help small business development community well-being.
concepto de diseño conceptualiza la como la calle llena de movimiento McKinley Park con concentraciones actividad en ciertas intersecciones Avenida Archer hasta la Ashland. El concepto integra elementos de callejones activados arte, un parque lineal, aceras extendidas, espacios comunitarios, peatonales y camiones de Estas adiciones estratégicas ayudar a promover el desarrollo pequeñas empresas y el bienestar comunidad.
These capstone studios centered around the critical notion of improving the quality of public open spaces for everyone, the summer 2022 and 2023 Chicago Charrette focused on engaging with the community of McKinley Park in partnership with a wide range of relevant stakeholders including the McKinley Park Development Council (MPDC) as lead community partner, the Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement (IPCE), and Design Workshop. The project focused on developing plans for three different public infrastructure improvement projects along 35th Street within the larger McKinley Park neighborhood. During studio, students worked intensely using a variety of participatory tools and engagement techniques to better understand the preferences and desires of community stakeholders through a series of events 7 ranging from popup events; open houses at local community space; a Charrette, and a community conversation and showcase.
我们的设计概念将第35街构想为麦金利公 园繁忙的街道，将重点放在从Archer to Street 的某些路口上。该概念结
合了艺术激活的小巷、线性公园、拓宽人行 道、社区空间、人行横道和移动餐车的元 素。这些概念有助于促进小型企业发展和社
35th Street as the ‘Neighborhood Main Street’ Calle 35 como la ‘Calle Principal del Barrio’
35th Street as the ‘Neighborhood Main Street’ Calle 35 como la ‘Calle Principal del Barrio’
The visualizations showcase a vibrant streetscape with small businesses, interactive public spaces, and protected bike lanes, providing the necessary community spaces for the neighborhood.
Las visualizaciones muestran un paisaje urbano vibrante con pequeñas empresas, espacios públicos interactivos y carriles para bicicletas protegidos, que brindan los espacios comunitarios necesarios para el barrio.
这里展示了一个充满活力的街景，拥有 小型企业、互动式公共空间和安全的骑 车道，以及为社区提供必要的邻里空 间。
Think Like a City: A Framework for Remaking Places (Summer 2024)
This capstone studio was done in collaboration with the Great Cities studio to build on their design work, which, reimagined the Illinois Medical District (IMD). Students worked closely with IMDC, Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement (IPCE), Design Workshop, and local stakeholders to co-design a community engagement process to understand user preferences of initial design proposals. Students gathered input from the diverse daily population within the IMD through various engagement activities such as a community- based survey, pop up events, focus groups, and Charrette. Utilizing broader community feedback, students refined design concepts and adopted a holistic approach centering principles of reparative planning that balanced institutional needs, while also fostering community healing and design justice.
Diverse Faculty and Practitioners
MCD has a diversity of faculty, practitioners and partners that teach, research, and lead community engagement efforts. Our faculty have expertise in climate resilience, ecological systems change, affordable housing, reparative planning, cultural planning, and community engagement. MCD also have practitioners from SOM, Design Workshop, and Gruen Associates that bring design expertise to our co-taught design studios. Faculty, practitioners, and students partner with a range of government, non-profit, institutional, and design partners to co-design built environment solutions for Chicago neighborhoods.
Faculty Making an Impact in the Field
Dr. April Jackson
Dr. Stacey Swearingen White
Director, Master of City Design, Associate Professor, Urban Planning and Policy Dean, College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs; Professor, Urban Planning and Policy
April is an Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a Research Affiliate with the National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities at Case Western Reserve University. As a community-engaged scholar-practitioner her research explores how to enhance planning practice and the built environment by promoting plans with a focus on racially equitable, inclusive, and just communities. Her work examines place-based, neighborhood-level affordable housing strategies that seek to embed racial equity in spatial plans and policies, highlighting reparative planning practices that aim to improve communities of color. She also researches issues impacting communities of color such as gentrification and displacement and climate gentrification.
Stacey Swearingen White is Dean of the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs (CUPPA) at UIC. She joins UIC from the University of Kansas, where she began her career as an assistant professor of urban planning. At KU, she served as the chair of the Urban Planning Department, co-founder and director of academic programs for the KU Center for Sustainability, and associate director of the Environmental Studies Program. Most recently, she served as director of the KU School of Public Affairs and Administration. Much of Swearingen White’s research focuses on sustainability innovation at the local level, including emphases on water quality and campus sustainability.
Dr. Kheir Al-Kodmany
Professor, Urban Planning and Policy
Dr. Kheir Al-Kodmany is a Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). His research and teaching cover a broad spectrum of topics, including vertical urbanism, sustainable design, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), visualization systems, public participation, crowd management, economic development, and skyscrapers. He has published nine books and over 100 papers. Dr. Al- Kodmany has taught for 25 years at UIC and five years at UIUC. He secured grants for a total of several hundred thousand dollars and authored visualization software. Before joining the UIC faculty, Prof. Al- Kodmany worked for the Chicago firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM).
Dr. Sevin Yildiz
Assistant Professor, Urban Planning and Policy
Şevin Yıldız is an Urban Planning and Policy Department Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago. She researches ecological planning and urban design in the context of climate change and global urbanization. She recently completed a manuscript investigating the planning field’s changing conceptualizations of wetlands, mangroves, and salt plains in metropolitan regions. Her primary case study is the New Jersey Meadowlands in the New York metropolitan area. Her publications explore how ecological design and planning ideas conceptualize and negotiate values and coexistence norms in metropolitan areas that have expanded into their fringe ecosystems. Her latest comparative piece examines the long-range planning of these land-to-water transitory ecosystems in Mumbai, Amsterdam, Tokyo, and New York. She also serves on the Chicago Department of Planning’s River Ecology Task Force since 2020.
Phil Enquist
Adjunct Professor
Phil Enquist is a former partner with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill where he led the global urban design practice for over 20 years. He is a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects and an Honorary Member of the American Society of Landscape Architects. He was a Governor’s Chair for Energy and Urbanism at the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory between 2013 and 2017 and currently is an advisor to the National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado. Phil seeks to find collaborative ways to reinvest in cities, emphasizing livability and balance between humans and nature.
Vinayak Bharne
Adjunct Professor
Vinayak Bharne is a practicing urban designer and city planner based in Los Angeles, and an Adjunct professor of Urbanism in the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California. His work ranges from new towns and inner-city revitalization to campus master plans and urban regulations for cities in North America, Asia and Africa. He is the 2024 recipient of the John Chase Visionary Award from the American Planning Association Los Angeles Section for significant contributions to the field of urban design and planning. His books include Affordable Housing, Cities; Urbanism Beyond 2020; and Streets for All: 50 Ideas for Shaping Resilient Cities.
Merav Argov
Adjunct Professor
Merav is an adjunct professor teaching in the MUPP and MCD programs at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Urban Planning and Policy Department. As a Cornell grant recipient, Merav examines how Lathrop Homes’ progressive community design can promote dialogue between mixed-income residents through art activation projects. Merav brings extensive experience in civic planning, community engagement, education, and art programming, both locally and internationally. She is a co-founder and Director at Fieldwork Collaborative Projects, increasing public infrastructure engagement through art. Leveraging her interdisciplinary background, Merav’s work sits at the intersection of urban design, community development, and the arts, allowing her to approach contemporary urban challenges with innovative perspectives.
Learn more about our Affiliated faculty and practitioners:
Sara Egan
Adjunct Professor
With almost two decades as a private sector planning and landscape architecture consultant, Sara is a practitioner focused on projects which seek to blur the line between planning and design to create sustainable, equitable and engaging places and spaces for people. Her dedication to the planning profession is in service of a belief in the power of transformation to elevate quality of life through meaningful economic, community and environmental impacts. Through her practice she helps communities anticipate and meet the needs of a changing world through planning and design services for projects at all scales from planning through implementation.
https://cuppa.uic.edu/academics/upp/upp- programs/master-of-city-design/affiliated-faculty-and-practitioners/
What’s Unique About MCD Community
The MCD program offers a unique experience to study in a global city like Chicago with experienced faculty, practitioners and partners minutes from downtown.
Students will engage in:
• Learning from urban design global thought leaders in Chicago, U.S., and globally
• Engaging with communities
• Award winning city design work
• Diverse student co-learning environment
• Experiential spring break trip
• Global lecture series
Learning from urban design global thought leadrs
The MCD program is crafted to offer students a global perspective on city design through the participation of numerous nationallyrecognized and internationally-known, award-winning practitioners and thought-leaders in urban design and planning in Chicago, the U.S., and worldwide. Through lectures, workshops, collaborative projects, walking tours, and spring break trips, students gain insights into urban design best practices and emerging trends, Additionally, the combined scholarship and work-experience of the MCD faculty itself encompasses all five continents, and spans numerous urgent global issues ranging from the climate crisis and housing to urban poverty in the majority world.
Engaging with communities
MCD has an emphasis on building university community partnerships and integrating community engagement that centers a design justice approach. MCD has been expanding partnerships with design firms and community partners through project and grant opportunities. We currently offer three collaborative studios with MCD and MUPP students with a range of partners from city agencies, non governmental agencies and coalitions to community based organizations. These collaborations offer on the ground real world experience on ongoing projects in Chicago with marginalized communities, leveraging our unique urban location and social justice values. MCD’s focus on integrating across disciplines and meaningfully engaging diverse stakeholders helps prepare students to thrive professionally.
Award winning city design work
Our MCD studios have won the Illinois American Planning Association (APA) Student Project award for three years in a row. The APA-IL Student Project Award recognizes an outstanding class project or paper by a student or group of students in Planning Accreditation Board (PAB)-accredited planning programs that contributed to advances in the field of planning. The following studios and projects have received awards to date:
• Summer 2022 Chicago Charrette studio: 35th Street
Reimagined: Codesigning neighborhood improvements with McKinley Park neighbors
• Spring 2023 Great Cities studio: Chicago’s New Nature: An Ecological Override Plan
• Spring 2024 Great Cities and Summer Chicago Charrette studio: Think Like a city: A Framework for remaking places
Diverse student co-learning environment
The MCD program attracts a diverse group of students from around the world. With backgrounds in various fields such as design, planning, and social science, students come together to create a stimulating learning environment. This global representation within each cohort offers a truly unique educational experience for all incoming students. Students develop a diverse range of skills through peer learning and academic influence. Group work in studios also mirrors postgraduation work environments, fostering interdisciplinary team-thinking practices for the field’s future.
Experiential spring break trip
During spring break, MCD students take a trip to a city that is a relevant case study for the topic explored in the spring and summer studios. In 2023, students went to Los Angeles to explore urban issues shaping the second largest city in the US. Students visited the offices of internationally known architects and urbanists such as Frank Gehry to review evolving proposals for the revitalization of the Los Angeles River, studied the city’s current public-transit initiatives, visited the walkable downtowns of cities such as Pasadena and Santa Monica, and observed various aspects of informal Latino urbanism. In 2024, students went to Boston, home to 25 hospitals, 20 community health centers, and leader in healthcare innovation districts – to integrate key design ideas into their plans for the Illinois Medical District (IMD). Students visited the offices of Sasaki and OJB to learn about ongoing medical district projects in Boston and other U.S. cities, visited Harvard Graduate School of Design and MIT with prominent faculty, and toured Kendall Square and Seaport.
Global lecture series
The global lecture series and talks are designed to create a dynamic platform for urban design, linking students and the broader community with innovative thinkers who bring fresh ideas, methods, and media to tackle urban challenges. Much like our studio talks, where interdisciplinary teams, individuals, and groups collaborate, these events explore how new modalities and frameworks can be developed to guide conversations on equity, social justice, climate resilience, and adaptability. The diverse range of speakers, representing a broad spectrum of stakeholders, opens up opportunities for forming new coalitions.
Who studies at MCD?
The Master of City Design will meet demand from domestic and international students with bachelor or masters degrees in architecture, landscape architecture, urban studies, urban planning, civil engineering, real estate, geography, environmental studies, fine arts, and related disciplines. The program will prepare students for entry-level urban design employment or enable them to gain acceptance to doctoral programs in urban planning, urbanism, design, and allied fields. MCD trains students to work in urban settings worldwide. All of our UPP graduate degrees are STEM classified under Sustainability Studies which means that international students with F-1 visas are eligible to remain in the US under the OPT (Optional Practical Training) program for up to three years and two months after graduation. Students with H-1b visas can stay up to 9 years after graduation.
ALUMNI AND PROFESSIONAL OPPORTUNITIES
Our Students and Alumni
The MCD program is interdisciplinary and has students from a wide variety of backgrounds including, but not limited to: architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, fine arts, and environmental studies. Our alumni go on to work in a range of fields from consulting, and public agencies, to non-profit organizations.
Bridget Barnes (22’)
Alumni Making an Impact in the Field
Alexandra Pollock (22’)
Planner/Designer, Design Workshop
I decided to pursue the MCD Program because I was interested in how design can be used to address the social, environmental, and ecological challenges of cities. Pursuing the MCD agree along with the MUPP degree granted me a deep understanding of how urban design issues play out spatially. I greatly value my time in the MCD program for the insight it gave me into how urban planning and design work in practice, particularly in Chicago. Upon graduation, I felt prepared to enter the industry and I am equipped with the knowledge I needed to take projects from concept through implementation. I met fantastic people, from my classmates, to faculty, to prominent individuals working in the industry I would highly recommend the MCD program to anyone hoping to receive a well-rounded degree that will prepare you for work in many years of the planning and design world.
Janhavi Manjrekar (23’)
Owing to my background in Architecture and Landscape Architecture, I chose the MCD program because it provides an edge in the profession of city design in Chicago; the birthplace of Burnham’s ‘City Beautiful’ movement. The program laid an emphasis on an overlap between urban planning and urban design through carefully curated plan-making processes for our framework plans, form based codes, etc, by collaborating with eminent practitioners, academics, and stakeholders in our studio sessions. As an international student, the program also offered an opportunity to contexualize the global challenges like climate change, urban edges, community engagement, and transit oriented developments in real life 12 urban issues. As a MCD graduate, this unique skillset and outlook has helped me better my professional duties as a landscape architect and urban designer working for different communities within the city.
I worked in marketing at an architecture firm for four years, and I have an undergraduate background in communications, graphic design, and social work. I always enjoyed working on urban design proposals in my marketing role, and realized I wanted to pursue urban design as a career path. I chose the UIC Master of City Design program for a few reasons. The program is condensed to one year and is affordable. The faculty and staff are renowned designers, planners, architects, and academics. Most importantly, the program is local to Chicago, and I had a chance to dive deep into learning about my own city. One of the most useful aspects of the program was having one semester’s studio focused on socioeconomic systems (revitalizing a commercial corridor) and one semester focused on natural systems (ecological design, particularly focused on finding solutions to cloudburst flooding). I was able to explore my interests in both subject areas and understand the wide scope of what an urban designer tackles. I would recommend students come to MCD if they are looking for an intensive and concise curriculum focused on the physical and spatial design of cities, where you will be instructed by the field’s most brilliant minds and reviewed by some of the industry’s top designers.
Urban Designer, Smith Group
Urban Designer and Landscape Architect, Living Habitats
Collaborative Testimonial
For the three of us, the Master of City Design program at UIC offered a path towards community-based urban design that was complementary to our backgrounds in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning. What we didn’t expect was that this one-year intensive program would deliver a transformative learning experience in applied design and create a close-knit partnership amongst ourselves.
MCD encouraged us to be collaborative and to engage directly with real-world issues. The hands-on studios, the valuable elective courses, and the community exposure brought our learning to life in ways that felt tangible and impactful. We not only learned how to construct design frameworks, but to keep the process alive and oriented towards people. Whether we were tackling issues of urban renewal, corridor revitalization, public transit, or climate resilience, MCD’s professors taught us to combine our unique perspectives to craft inclusive urban design solutions. This interdisciplinary environment is on par with what you’d find at elite universities, but with one big distinction: MCD’s laboratory is Chicago–a city steeped in design history that becomes your partner as you work through the program.
Yet, our experiences in Chicago aren’t siloed. MCD offers unparalleled access to design practitioners from around the world, compared to other programs. Whether it was through site visits, guest lectures, or juried studio presentations, we were constantly exposed to innovative ideas and thinking. Many of these relationships fostered by our professors and the program administrators are sure to last far longer than your time at UIC. This is especially true for us. We built a supportive network amongst ourselves that helps us collaborate and co-create that has made us better designers.
At MCD, you’ll be provided with the tools, knowledge, and experiences to advance your career, as it has done for us. Regardless of your design background, MCD encourages you to be fluid and to think collaboratively about your work, while giving you a chance to meaningfully apply that knowledge. The future of City Design is interdisciplinary and community-based. That’s why we chose MCD.
Recent graduate career outcomes
Graduates work for both architecture, planning, urban design, and landscape architecture consulting firms, as well as for governments, foundations, community organizations, and other agencies. Our top employers include:
• Site Design Group
• SOM
• Design Workshop
• Muse Community Design
• City of Chicago
• Lamar Johnson Collaborative
• Smith Group
• City of Atlanta
• Living Habitats
Employment Growth from 2016 to 2026
$85,000
Average Salary for AICP Status
— American Planning Association, 2018
Positions
Joshua Fraser (24’), Dimitri Nesbitt (24’), and Eneyda Salcedo (24’)
Ready to make an impact on the built environment, planning and policy through city design?
MCD offers an interdisciplinary program with diverse faculty who are committed to addressing critical issues of racial and spatial justice through community driven design, ecological systems change, affordable and inclusive communities, and reparative planning. Joining MCD to begin and continue your career through our city design program will give you the tools to make an impact as design
professionals centering just, resilient and inclusive communities to improve and support communities, cities, and sub regions globally. We Invite you to learn more about our programs – including the admissions application and financial aid process.
You will find additional resources and next steps here.
Admissions
STEP 1:
https://applynow.uic.edu/register/?id=54cde871-63cb-4cd6-9814-a90893c472cc
https://cuppa.uic.edu/academics/upp/upp-programs/master-of-city-design/
STEP 2: STEP 3: Introduce yourself by filling out an online form at Connect with us by visiting our website at Apply online at
https://admissions.uic.edu/
Deadline
Submit your online application materials by May 15, 2025 for domestic applicants and April 1, 2025 for international applicants.
Graduate Tuition and Fees
For more information, visit
https://admissions.uic.edu/graduate-professional/tuition-fees
Financial Aid
For more information, visit
https://cuppa.uic.edu/academics/upp/upp-programs/master-of-city-design/
Contact Information
Dr. April Jackson, Director City Design, Associate Professor, Urban Planning and Policy: ajacks29@uic.edu Erica Mann, Academic Graduate Advisor, Urban Planning and Policy: elmann@uic.edu
