Urban & Regional Planning > Academic Program

Academic Program

Programs Offered	Admission Information
Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) The Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning Professional Certificate in Urban Planning Certificate in Planning Studies Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance	Application Deadlines Financial Assistance Unclassified Students Persons not Registered as Students Evening and Late Afternoon Classes Admission Assessment Form (PDF) Express information form (DOC) 2007-2008 Department Bulletin (PDF) PhDGuidelines_3-13-08 (DOC)

Urban and regional planning (PLAN) is a dynamic field, that is still evolving. It emerged out of the convergence of two concerns: (1) the provision of urban infrastructure and (2) the initiation of social reform. While the underlying focus on community well-being continues, urban and regional planning today has broadened to include the development, implementation, and evaluation of a wide range of policies. Specifically, urban and regional planners, in both developing and developed countries, are concerned with the following:

The use of land in the city, in the suburbs, and in rural areas, particularly with the transition from one use to another;
The adverse impacts of human activities on the environment and the possible mitigation of those impacts;
The design of the city and the surrounding region so as to facilitate activities in which people need and want to engage;
The organization of settlement systems and the location of human activities in urban and regional space;
Identification of social needs and the design and provision of services and facilities to meet those needs;
The distribution of resources and of benefits and costs among people;
The anticipation of change and its impact on how people do and can live;
Participation of citizens in planning processes that affect their future; and
The way that choices are made, decisions implemented, and actions evaluated, and the means by which those processes can be improved in urban and regional areas.

The Department of Urban and Regional Planning takes a multidisciplinary approach to planning education, recognizing in particular the important contributions to planning that can be made by the social and natural sciences and by the architectural, public health, social work, and civil engineering professions; emphasizes extensive community involvement; engages in research that focuses on application of planning methodologies and implementation of planning endeavors; recognizes the close relationship between urban and regional planning and politics; acknowledges the difficulty of resolving the value differences that lie at the heart of most planning problems; and appreciates both the importance and the elusiveness of critical concepts, such as “the public interest,” to urban and regional planning.

UH Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) graduates, of whom there are about 310, hold planning and related positions in a variety of public agencies, academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, and private firms in Hawai‘i, on the continental United States, and in the Asia Pacific region.