Institute of Urban & Regional Development
IURD is the hub for interdisciplinary research at the College of Environmental Design and home to the Abbey Master of Real Estate Development + Design, the Master of Urban Design, and the Sustainable Environmental Design major.
Academic Programs
ABBEY MASTER OF REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT + DESIGN
The interdisciplinary Abbey Master of Real Estate Development + Design goes beyond the fundamentals — finance, law and entitlements, construction, economics and market analysis — to place special focus on design, sustainability and resilience, and equity and inclusion. It is offered on campus both as a one-year full-time program and a two-year part-time program.
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MASTER OF URBAN DESIGN
The Master of Urban Design degree program is a one-year, advanced, interdisciplinary program for those with a prior professional degree in architecture, landscape architecture, or city and regional planning. MUD students learn to work effectively in teams across a large range of scales and develop a deep understanding of urban places and the forces that shape them.
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BA IN SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN
The multidisciplinary sustainable environmental design major offers students a critical understanding of the sustainability challenges facing urban regions in California and around the globe, and equips them with the technical, analytic and design tools key to devising creative solutions.
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News
Featured Faculty Research
Park use, perceived park proximity, and neighborhood characteristics: Evidence from 11 cities in Latin America
By Daniel Rodriguez (DCRP), Mika R. Moran, Andrea Cotinez-O’Ryan, J. Jaime Miranda
The need for more public spaces and parks in cities is not new, and it is especially prominent in Latin American cities which suffer from extreme deficit and unequal distribution of parks and greenspaces. A recently published study by IURD researchers sheds light on the importance of parks in Latin American cities. The study analyzed data from a survey of 7,970 people in 11 cities conducted by the Development Bank of Latin America in 2016. According to the study findings, urban residents were significantly more likely to visit parks on a regular basis, if they lived within a 10-minute walk or less from a park. While these associations may seem intuitive, what draws attention is their consistency across the board, suggesting that all residents, regardless of socioeconomic and/or built environment conditions, used parks more if they were available nearby. The findings advocate for increased proximity between parks and residential areas in formal and informal urban settings as a promising strategy to improve overall public health and to reduce health inequalities in Latin American cities.
Read the full paper here.
