Program Description
The PhD Program in Planning, Design and the Built Environment is a transdisciplinary, three-year postmaster’s degree program consisting of 61 hours. In most cases, students enter the program with a master’s degree in architecture or landscape architecture, city and regional planning, real estate development, or construction science. Because of the program’s transdisciplinary orientation, students may be drawn from other disciplines including engineering, business, the social sciences, and humanities. Students from those program areas may be required to take prerequisite coursework. Students with advanced preparation may take slightly less than three years.
The curriculum is divided into core courses, concentration courses, comprehensive examination and dissertation research. Students select a field from the traditional disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, planning, real estate development, or construction to build disciplinary as well as a transdisciplinary area of concentration. Areas of concentration are developed subject to faculty expertise and student interest. Areas of concentration may be drawn from the program faculty’s four transdisciplinary core areas: Regional and Community Development and Design; Built Environment and Health; Restoration, Sustainability and Land Ecology; and Technology, Materials, and Construction Processes. Specific research projects within in these concentrations might focus on urban design, health care, energy, development, transportation and land use, housing and community development, restoration, sustainability, architectural robotics, landscape ecology, and building practice and technology.
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