The Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning Program
The Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning (BURP) is a professional program that provides students with the knowledge base and analytical and design skills to address issues that affect the quality of life in neighborhoods, suburbs, cities, and regions. The curriculum consists of planning lecture courses, studio/lab courses, and professional practice courses that give students real-world planning experience. Students select courses from a wide variety of suggested electives that allow them to focus on topics of particular interest. Graduates of the program qualify for positions in a variety of public and private organizations, including local and state planning departments, nonprofit organizations, and private sector planning and development firms.
Why Do You Want To Be an Urban and Regional Planner?
If you are interested in a career in which you can help your community, influence the direction of growth and change, and build a better future, you should consider urban and regional planning. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Are you interested in positive social, economic, environmental, and physical change?
- Do you want to work with people to develop a better community?
- Do you like to communicate and work with others generating new ideas, programs, and plans?
- Are you challenged by complex problems and willing to be a part of a cooperative process to devise solutions to those problems?
- Do you think about the future? About what could be rather than what is?
If your answers to any of these questions are affirmative, then urban and regional planning might be the career for you. Planning is a systematic, creative way to influence the future of neighborhoods, cities, rural and metropolitan areas, even the country and the world. Urban and regional planners use their professional skills to serve communities facing social, economic, environmental, and cultural challenges by helping community residents to:
- develop ways to preserve and enhance their quality-of-life;
- find methods to protect the natural and built environment;
- identify policies to promote equity and equality;
- structure programs to improve services to disadvantaged communities; and
- determine methods to deal effectively with growth and development of all kinds.
For more information about careers in planning, see the ACSP publication Choosing a Career in Urban and Regional Planning, from which the above material is taken.
Accelerated Graduate Program
Are you interested in completing a master's degree after your bachelor's degree? FAU offers an accelerated Master of Urban and Regional Planning program that gives advanced standing to qualified students who take graduate courses during their undergraduate Bachelor of Architecture, Bachelor of Urban Design, or Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning programs. For more information see MURP Advanced Standing Programs and the Graduate College's Pathways to Graduate Education.
Resources
For any questions regarding the Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning degree program, please contact Dr. Diana Mitsova (Faculty Advisor) at dmitsova@fau.edu.
For questions about advising, please contact the College Advising Center at 561-297-3700. To make an appointment with your advisor, please log on to the Success Network/Starfish.