A New Doctoral Concentration in Advanced Urbanism

The MIT School of Architecture and Planning will offer a new concentration to support collaborative doctoral-level studies in Advanced Urbanism, with applications being accepted in fall 2018.

The concentration in Advanced Urbanism will creatively engage research on the culture of cities, processes of urbanization, and urban design. “The new program will play an important role in introducing the constantly changing landscape of our ever growing cities,” notes Eran Ben-Joseph, Head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Students and faculty will examine modes of urban life and lifeways, urban form, and urban social thought to identify new integrated perspectives on the design of cities and metropolitan regions, and the dynamic restructuring of global urban networks. 

“Having departments of both architecture and planning at MIT, with faculty with expertise in architecture, landscape architecture, engineering, urban planning, and urban design, provides a solid foundation for this program,” says Hashim Sarkis, Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning “It also has the advantage of having an engaged ecosystem of economists, political scientists, and technologists who are increasingly being identified as key actors in addressing urban issues.”

Applicants will apply for admission to an existing doctoral program in the Department of Architecture or Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Those admissions committees will direct applicants who fit the urbanism concentration to a joint Advanced Urbanism admissions committee. Selected students will be admitted by their home department or discipline group (Department of Urban Studies and Planning; Aga Khan Program in Islamic Architecture, Building Technology, Computation, History Theory and Criticism) and receive financial support through research assistantships in the Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (LCAU). Support for this program was created by the Muriel and Norman B. Leventhal Family Foundation and the Sherry and Alan Leventhal Family Foundation.

The concentration in Advanced Urbanism seeks doctoral applicants (one to two per year) who have at least one professional design degree (in architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, etc.) and research interests in urbanism that would draw on faculty advising from both academic departments.

According to Andrew Scott, interim Head of the Department of Architecture, “The new program affords doctoral students from Architecture the opportunity to engage in the research of cities and a broad range of critical issues affecting urban environments and systems at an advanced level, using the resources of LCAU and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning.  The program also enables a cross-disciplinary platform for those working in architecture to work with other disciplines at MIT to research and design for the myriad cultural, social and environmental challenges of the global urbanization.”

More information on the concentration in Advanced Urbanism is available here: http://lcau.mit.edu/center/education