Illustrated nighttime urban design concept by KU architecture students showing a dense, futuristic city skyline with glowing high-rise buildings in shades of blue and purple. In the foreground, a large, circular transit or civic hub with a luminous, ring-shaped center connects to elevated, wing-like platforms spanning a river. Small drone-like vehicles move through the air between buildings, and neon-lit pathways and windows create a digital, high-tech atmosphere under a dark sky with scattered clouds.

Urban Design

Program Overview

The Fall semester offers an immersive introduction to the professional world of urban design, urban architecture, and planning. Students engage directly with the culture of multidisciplinary design teams, gain insight into contemporary urban development and building processes, and study the character and challenges of diverse urban environments. Through a paid internship in firm offices across the country—including Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, New York, Des Moines, and Dallas—students work hands-on with active urban design, urban architecture, and planning projects, contributing to research, analysis, and design exploration that address real urban issues.

Following a semester of professional practice and city-focused inquiry, students convene in Kansas City for the Spring Capstone Studio. Here, they synthesize their internship experience and urban research into a thesis-driven Urban Design project, culminating in a comprehensive design proposal and public exhibition. 

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Practical Internship Experience

Experiential learning is woven throughout the program, ensuring students gain skills in real urban contexts from day one. Whether engaging with neighborhoods, working alongside city agencies, or partnering with design and planning professionals, students contribute to active projects that reflect the realities of contemporary urban challenges. Complementing this project-based work, internships with top urban design, planning, and architecture firms across the United States expose students to professional practice at a high level. Together, these experiences deepen students’ understanding of the social, environmental, and spatial forces shaping cities and help them cultivate the networks and capabilities needed to launch impactful careers in the urban field.

 

Capstone Thesis Project

The program culminates in an independent capstone thesis, giving students the opportunity to investigate a contemporary urban topic of their choosing in depth. Guided by faculty mentors, students develop a research or design-driven inquiry that addresses pressing challenges facing cities today—from climate resilience and housing equity to mobility innovation and public realm design. The capstone encourages critical thinking, original work, and rigorous exploration, empowering students to articulate a clear point of view and contribute new insight to the evolving discourse of urbanism.

Angled mockup of a large-format poster displaying a Miami transit system proposal placed on a dark gray surface. The poster features a vertically oriented map of Miami with color-coded transit lines—rail, bus, and connections—running along a chain of coastal islands. A legend and explanatory text appear on the left, while an inset map in the lower right zooms into a dense downtown transit hub. The design uses a dark blue palette with bright accent colors for routes, and the word “MIAMI” is c

Courses

Students who complete the Urban Design Pathway earn the Graduate Certificate in Urban Design.

Arch 620 – Theory of Urban Design (3 Hours)

Arch 813 – Urban Design Internship (6 Hours)

Arch 814 – Urban Design Capstone Studio (6 Hours) 

Faculty

For further information contact Andrew Moddrell, Associate Professor Architecture

Admission

Graduate students must formally request the addition of the graduate certificate by submitting an application to KU Graduate Admissions as a "Current KU Graduate Student". If you have any questions regarding the application, please reach out to the KU Graduate Admissions team at graduateadm@ku.edu. 

**Alt text:** Angled mockup of a large-format poster displaying a Miami transit system proposal placed on a dark gray surface. The poster features a vertically oriented map of Miami with color-coded transit lines—rail, bus, and connections—running along a chain of coastal islands. A legend and explanatory text appear on the left, while an inset map in the lower right zooms into a dense downtown transit hub. The design uses a dark blue palette with bright accent colors for routes, and the word “MIAMI” is c
Three-panel urban design presentation illustrating a multi-scalar transit proposal. The left panel, labeled “Scale 1: Transit,” shows a detailed regional transit map of Miami with colored rail, metrobus, ferry, and connection lines. The center panel, “Scale 2: City,” depicts an isometric chain of dense island districts connected by a continuous elevated transit loop highlighted in bright pink, with zoom-in callouts of key nodes. The right panel, “Scale 3: Station,” presents a nighttime persp
Project images from "RESILIENT TRANSIT Miami c.2100" by Hanna Hissa + Isaac Decker.