Urban Planning and Design at Harvard

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Urban Planning and Design at Harvard

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For more information please visit gsd.harvard.edu/upd Since then, Harvard has played a leading role in the education of urban planners and urban designers.

It was at Harvard University that the first formal North American programs in city and regional planning (1923) and urban design (1960) were established. The Department of Urban Planning and Design is home to both professions, offering a professional degree in urban planning and a post-professional degree in urban design

09/22/2026

The Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies are pleased to announce that Vincent Reina has been named the inaugural Nicolas P. and Joan B. Retsinas Faculty Director of the JCHS and Professor in Practice of Urban Planning at the GSD. In these roles, Reina will join the senior faculty of the GSD, and his appointment will take effect on January 1, 2027. The Retsinas Directorship was established to honor Nicolas (MCP ’71) and Joan (GSD ’69) Retsinas and Nic’s vision of inclusive and equitable housing programs and policy. Founded in 1959, the Joint Center for Housing Studies is jointly affiliated with the GSD and the Harvard Kennedy School.

Reina, a leading national housing scholar, comes to Harvard from the University of Pennsylvania, where he is currently a Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design and the Founder and Faculty Director of the Housing Initiative at Penn. His work at Penn focused on advancing effective housing policy through rigorous research and close partnerships with cities, states, and national organizations. From 2022 to 2024, he served on the White House Domestic Policy Council as Senior Advisor for Housing and Urban Policy.

08/31/2026

A great way to kick off the new semester on two wheels! 🚲

MUP students joined GSD Mobility for the annual Cambridge Bike Ride & Tour, exploring the city’s cycling infrastructure and getting to know Cambridge from a different perspective along the way.

Big thanks to Dr. Jeffrey Rosenblum for leading the ride, and to everyone who joined us!

📸 A few moments from the tour. Photos credit to Li Hou

08/28/2026

A summer afternoon on the Charles! ⛵️☀️

UPD students and faculty came together for a Charles River architectural boat tour, taking in Boston & Cambridge from a different perspective while connecting across Urban Planning, Urban Design, and Real Estate.

Thank you to everyone who joined us on the water and helped make it such a memorable way to wrap up the summer!

08/11/2026

🎓 Five years out, where has the journey taken you? Join UPD alumni for a conversation about the early years after the GSD: finding that first opportunity, navigating career pivots, and reflecting on how their paths have evolved since graduation.

Open to incoming students, returning students, alumni, and faculty of the GSD.

Register today: https://forms.gle/cT6YuzUxMfN69WD19

07/24/2026

How do laws and public policies shape the cities we live in?

Professor Nestor Davidson explores this question in a new GSD interview. Recently appointed Director of the Master in Real Estate (MRE) program, he shares his perspectives on urban law, housing affordability, and emerging technologies. He also discusses the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in real estate education.

Read the full interview:
https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/2026/07/nestor-davidson-urban-law-new-role-as-mre-director/

07/20/2026

🎓 From studio to practice, what happens in the first 10 years? Join UPD alumni for an honest conversation about launching careers, finding opportunities, navigating change, and looking back on a decade after the GSD. Open to incoming students, returning students, alumni, and faculty of the GSD.

Register today: https://forms.gle/yG2WnwbSGgfYqFD69

07/14/2026

José Antonio “Tony” Gómez-Ibáñez, Derek C. Bok Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy, Emeritus, died on June 10, 2026.

For nearly five decades, Tony Gómez-Ibáñez was a defining presence in the study of cities at Harvard, and a living bridge between the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and the Harvard Kennedy School, where he held a joint appointment believed to be the first of its kind. He arrived at Harvard College as an undergraduate in 1966 and never really left. After earning his Master in Public Policy degree in 1972 and his PhD in 1975, he joined the GSD’s planning faculty. At the GSD, he chaired the Department of Urban Planning and Design (1984–1988) and directed the school’s doctoral programs (1992–1995). He was also instrumental in establishing the Master in Urban Planning program in 1994—when Harvard’s planning degree program returned to the GSD—and led it from 2001 to 2004. Until his retirement in 2021, he remained a leading voice in shaping the program’s future. Tony’s leadership extended to the other side of Harvard Yard as well. At the Kennedy School, he chaired the Master in Public Policy program (1996–1998) and the Social and Urban Policy Area (2007–2012), and for 15 years he cochaired the Infrastructure in a Market Economy executive program, training senior infrastructure officials from around the world.

Tony was also a leading scholar of transportation and infrastructure policy whose dozens of publications include the books Regulating Infrastructure (2003) and, with John R. Meyer, Autos, Transit, and Cities (1981). His counsel was sought far beyond the academy, by governments and institutions around the world. Among them were Boston’s City Hall, where he chaired Mayor Raymond Flynn’s Transportation Advisory Committee; the World Bank, on railway privatization in Brazil and transport strategy in Sri Lanka; and the National Academies, on questions from freight pricing to whether denser neighborhoods result in less driving and lower car emissions.

On the GSD website, we've gathered several remembrances of Tony from colleagues and former students. Link in comments.

06/18/2026

🎓 15 Years Out: Tracing Trajectories
Where can a GSD degree take you over 15 years?

As part of the Harvard GSD Urban Planning and Design Summer Experience, we invite you to the first event in our alumni panel series, featuring MUP and MAUD graduates from the Class of 2011.

This relaxed, conversation-style panel will reflect on 15 years of career journeys across the public, private, academic, and nonprofit sectors. Alumni will share candid insights, memorable pivots, lessons learned, and advice for the next generation of planners and designers.

🗓️ Thursday, June 25
🕗 8:00–9:00 PM ET | 5:00–6:00 PM PT | 8:00–9:00 AM CST, Friday
📍 Zoom: Register here
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeY9PfvBAzDVQ9gVxFia1a5ykJuPJOvAI2kknT8Rprgo-fSCQ/viewform

Open to incoming students, returning students, alumni, and faculty of the GSD.

06/05/2026

Congratulations to the MUP team behind Make/Mend, selected as a finalist in the 2026 American Planning Association (APA) Student Planning and Design Competition.

Developed for northwest Detroit, Make/Mend reimagines the Joe Louis Greenway corridor as a framework for ecological restoration, community connection, and economic revitalization. Through a combination of green infrastructure, public space, mobility improvements, and workforce development strategies, the proposal seeks to repair fragmented urban landscapes while creating new opportunities for residents and local industry.

The APA Student Planning and Design Competition is a national annual competition that challenges graduate planning students to address real-world community issues through innovative planning and design solutions.

Congrats again to MUP students Emma Fairfield, Kendal Eastwood, Micah Weese, Sierra Foster, and Noah Johnson on this achievement.

05/22/2026

As final reviews conclude across the GSD, we’re highlighting student work from Core MUP Studio II. First-year MUPs Yanjia Jin, Julia Mettler-Grove, and Shirley Zhong developed “Five Landscapes at the Water’s Edge,” a coastal flooding adaptation framework for the City of Revere.

The project organizes Revere’s flood-exposed landscape into five placetypes including beach, marsh, parks, roads, and buildings, each paired with adaptation strategies that can be implemented incrementally. Together, these strategies form a coordinated framework for 2050 that establishes clear criteria for prioritization and long-term adaptation efforts.

Address

48 Quincy Street, Gund Hall
Cambridge, MA
02138

Website

https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/urban-planning-design/

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