Metropolitan Design at Minnesota—our approach
Building on the strengths of the College of Design, the title Metropolitan Design reflects the focus of this program on urban design in a metropolitan context.
At its broadest, urban design focuses on the design of the urban environment. It is claimed as a specialty by three professions: architecture, landscape architecture, and planning. Given this breadth, there are several approaches to urban design at a metropolitan scale and the program will introduce students to most of them and provide depth in several.
- Civic architecture/contextual design (civic scale ensembles-including public, corporate, visionary or avant garde).
- New town physical planning.
- Public place making.
- Urban restoration (urban redevelopment, streetscapes, historic preservation).
- Land planning (considering land form and nature).
- Public policy (development regulations, design guidelines).
- Participatory/community design.
- Urban infrastructure (the skeleton or framework of the metropolis, including green infrastructure).
- Sustainable urban form/growth management (smart growth, green urbanism, ecological design).
- Healthy cities.
If you think urban design is just about designing big buildings in center cities this is not the program for you. The Certificate in Metropolitan Design focuses on the rest of the metropolitan environment.
The certificate is currently open to graduate students in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, and is a college-based certificate. Graduate students in other colleges may also enroll.
The certificate is an intensive 21-credit concentration within existing masters degrees. It is possible to integrate it into the Masters of Architecture and Masters of Landscape Architecture with no additional courses. For the Masters of Urban Planning, students may need to do 3 additional credits.
