The Master of Arts degree is awarded for completion of 36 credits. A maximum of six credits of graduate-level coursework may be transferred. Students must maintain a 3.0 cumulative grade point average and fulfill all requirements in a timely manner.
Second Year / Fall |
|
|---|---|
| PGUD 5200 Theories of Urban Practice Thesis Prep | 3 |
| PGUD 5230 Advanced Research in Theories of Urban Practice | 3 |
| Elective |
3 |
| 9 |
Second Year / Spring |
|
|---|---|
| PGUD 5300 Theories of Urban Practice Thesis | 6 |
| Elective |
3 |
| 9 |
| Total Credits | 36 |
First Year/Fall
Modes of Urbanist Practice. Organized in conjunction with the MS Design and Urban Ecologies program, Colloquium 1 investigates practice-based relationships between design, urbanism, and spatial political economy. The colloquium offers students a broad, transdisciplinary overview of design frameworks through alternating lectures and group discussions. Students develop a typomorphological understanding of cities and learn to conceptualize the relationship between physical and social aspects of urban space. Topics covered include ecology and topography, land divisions and property structures, urban precincts and building blocks, and open space and infrastructure networks.
Critical Approaches to Transforming Cities. This seminar is intended to help articulate the conceptual skills students will bring to their practice. Students are introduced to a range of 20th- and 21st-century theories that have influenced urbanism, including the work of Geddes, Le Corbusier, Doxiadis, Jacobs, Lynch, and Koolhaas. They also investigate lesser-known but equally important urban theorists such as Alexander, Crawford, Correa, Hakim, Harvey, Hayden, Rowe, and Sandercock. Students reflect critically on the ways theoretical knowledge shapes practical action and develop their own ideas about transforming cities.
In their first year, students choose an elective at Parsons (which can be a studio, a lab, or a workshop) that introduces them to the skills involved in the study and practice of urbanism. Students learn a range of techniques for examining and documenting places, including methods of graphic, textual, and aural analysis. They develop an understanding of the intricacy and complexity of cities, considering not only built form, open spaces, and infrastructure systems but also the invisible structures of cities. The elective trains future urbanists to read and understand representations of the city (such as plans, perspectives, models, and simulations), present their own design ideas and strategies creatively, critique and modify urban projects, and take part in the kind of transdisciplinary collaboration necessary to address complex urban challenges.
First Year/Spring
Critical Histories of the City. In this seminar, students develop a critical, future-oriented understanding of the history of urbanism. The seminar exposes students to multiple perspectives on urban history—including the long-dominant Eurocentric view and postcolonial and subaltern perspectives—and invites them to challenge the assumptions underlying these approaches. Students analyze change in urban environments over time and look at who shapes cities, how cities change, and why those in power want to shape and reshape cities.
Activist Practice and Urban Transformation. Organized in conjunction with the MS Design and Urban Ecologies, this colloquium is structured around alternating guest lectures and group discussions. It builds on the discussions in Colloquium 1, shifting the focus to the dynamics of urban transformation. Students analyze the processes by which cities are conceived and built and examine the way they evolve over time as a result of social change, political structures, economic decisions, conflict, and technology. Guests include designers, political activists, and representatives from city planning, parks and recreation, transportation, real estate, global organizations such as the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank, and nongovernmental organizations.
In the spring semester of the first year of the program, each student chooses an elective course offered by another division of The New School. Examples include courses at Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy (such as Capitalism, Democracy, and Civil Society; Leading and Implementing Community Change; and Power, Strategy, and Social Change), the graduate program in International Affairs (such as African Cities, Slums, and Housing Policy; Cities, Infrastructure, and Development; and Cities and Citizenship), The New School for Social Research (such as Design and Social Sciences, Introductory Proseminar in Philosophy, The Idea of Revolution, and Fund of Urban Sociology), and The New School for Public Engagement (such as The Design Process, Technology and the City, and Ethnography and the New Media).
Second Year/Fall
Critical Knowledge as Transformative Practice. Students are required to take this seminar in the second year to prepare for completion of their final thesis. The seminar is designed to help students define and structure the thesis project and to introduce them to a variety of research methodologies that are utilized in professional practice as well as academic scholarship. Students develop a thesis outline by completing a series of short exercises. They learn skills essential to conducting research: seeking support from and offering support to peers and putting forth proposals and ideas even if they are not fully formed.
Creating Knowledge Through Research Methods. This research course is run as an experimental workshop in which students investigate both conventional and unconventional practices, such as literature searches, fieldwork, quantitative analysis, physical surveys and measurements, historical and archival work, interviews and focus groups, photography and other types of visual documentation, and participatory action research, focusing on the effects of a researcher's actions on a community. These practices are tested, analyzed, and applied through methods including social networking and remote observation. Each student creates a tool kit tailored to his or her own area of research for the final thesis.
In the second year of the program, students are encouraged to take electives that either relate directly to their thesis or enable them to begin charting their activities after graduation. Students may take the elective at Parson, at another division of The New School or at a school or program outside of The New School that has been approved by the MA program.
Second Year/Spring
Students work independently on an original thesis with the guidance of a thesis advisor and under the supervision of the thesis committee. The thesis advisor and committee are appointed and preparatory research is completed by the end of Thesis Prep in the fall semester of the second year. Student should demonstrate the ability to use literature searches, archival study, and fieldwork to develop a compelling written and visual narrative. With committee approval, students may submit thesis projects in alternative forms, such as documentary video or multimedia. The completed thesis must demonstrate original analysis and thinking on theoretical, historical, social, ecological, or other dimensions of contemporary urban practices. Students learn how to develop their thesis for publication, whether in scholarly peer-reviewed journals, news magazines, position papers put out by think tanks or nonprofit organizations, or reputable websites that reach a large and varied audience. The thesis may explore areas such as urban design, urban studies, urban ecology, design theory, or social advocacy and political activism in the design and building of cities.
In the second year of the program, students are encouraged to take electives that either relate directly to their thesis or enable them to begin charting their activities after graduation. Students may take the elective at Parson, at another division of The New School or at a school or program outside of The New School that has been approved by the MA program.
Please note: Students are advised to refer to the current applicable program catalog for degree completion requirements and to confirm their progress in satisfying those requirements with their advisors.
