Courses of Study 2023-2024
CRP – URS
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Undergraduate Study in Urban and Regional Studies (B.S. URS)
The program in Urban and Regional Studies (URS) is a four-year academic program aimed at understanding human communities and the urban built environment. URS courses ask how a vast spectrum of social and economic forces have changed cities; what these changes mean for people in their daily lives; and how citizens, community groups, and planners can work together to make productive, sustainable, safe, lively, and livable places. Graduates from the program receive a bachelor of science degree.
Instruction mode: In person
Program location: Ithaca, New York
- Optional study locations: Cornell in Rome, Rome, Italy; Gensler Family AAP NYC Center, New York, New York
Length of program: 8 semesters; 120 academic credits; full-time study
B.S. URS Degree Requirements
Core classes in the major focus on cities and regions — their history, governments, economies, and sociology; students elect other classes from the department and throughout the university.
URS requirements for graduation include:
- Eight semesters of residence
- 120 academic credits
- Two First-Year Writing Seminars
- Distribution requirements (nine classes)
- Required core classes for the major (nine classes)
- Additional required CRP classes at the 3000-level or higher (five classes)
- Free electives selected in consultation with a faculty advisor or from a course list organized by planning interest areas
- Completion of the university physical education and swim test requirements
B.S. URS Requirement Areas
1a. First-Year Writing Seminars: Two Courses
URS students must successfully complete two First-Year Writing Seminars. Information regarding the First-Year Writing Seminar can be found on the Knight Institute website. Advanced Placement (AP) credit can be applied toward a maximum of one First-Year Writing Seminar. Students earning a score of 5 on one English literature and English language exam will receive 3 credits which will be applied toward one First-Year Writing Seminar. Students earning a score of 5 on both English literature and English language exams will receive 3 credits toward one First-Year Writing Seminar and 3 credits toward the free elective requirement.
1b. Distribution Requirements: Nine Classes outside of CRP
Students must successfully complete nine classes outside of the Department of City and Regional Planning for the distribution requirement. A total of four classes must be completed in the categories of physical and biological sciences (PBS, BIO, and PHS) and mathematics and quantitative reasoning (MQR, SDS, and SMR). Of those four classes, at least two must be classified as Physical and/or Biological Sciences and at least one class must be classified as Mathematics and Quantitative Reasoning. The fourth class can be classified as either.
The remaining five courses must be courses identified by any college at Cornell in the humanities and social sciences categories of arts, literature, and culture (ALC), ethics and the mind (ETM), global citizenship (GLC), historical analysis (HST), social difference (SCD), social sciences (SSC). These five courses must be selected from at least four of these six categories (i.e., ALC, ETM, GLC, HST, SCD, and SSC). No more than three of these five courses can be taken in any one department.
Notes about AAP classes:
2. Required Core Classes for the Major: Nine Classes
Microeconomics:
Students will be enrolled in ECON 1110 - Introductory Microeconomics in their first fall semester.
If students have Advanced Placement credit for Microeconomics, they have the option of taking one higher-level economics course from the following list of microeconomics courses:
Statistics:
Students will be enrolled in CRP 1200 - Introduction to Statistics for Urban Studies in their first spring semester.
If students have Advanced Placement credit for statistics, they have the option of taking one advanced statistics course from the following list of statistics courses instead of CRP 1200 . Advanced Placement statistics credit will be forfeited with the completion of CRP 1200 .
Engaged Learning Course:
URS students in their third or fourth year must complete at least one semester-long course that involves engaged learning, which is a context to apply methods and to experiment with forms of collaboration beyond the academy and university. This can be accomplished via workshops in Rome (in the 3rd year), Ithaca, New York City, and/or Nilgiris Field Learning Center. The course must be taken for at least 4 credits and be offered by the CRP department.
Courses include:
3. Additional Required CRP Classes: Five CRP Classes
The program requires that students take five additional CRP classes at the 3000-level or higher, for a minimum of 3 credits each. Independent study courses (CRP 4900 -4970 ) cannot be applied toward this requirement and will be automatically applied toward the free elective requirements area. CRP 3348/5348 - Design Connect , if completed for 3 or more credits, can be applied toward a maximum of one required CRP class; additional enrollments will be applied as free elective credit. Students are encouraged to select courses in consultation with their faculty advisor or from the list of recommended courses organized by planning interest area . Required CRP courses must be completed at Cornell University.
*Note - The following out-of-department classes can also count toward the required CRP course requirement:
4. Free Electives
Central to the liberal arts philosophy of the URS program is the opportunity to take a large number of elective courses in a variety of subjects. URS students are free to take classes in any academic department on campus.
Focus Areas
Focus areas build on their URS core classes and CRP electives to inform a students’ choice of electives, deepen their knowledge of a particular application (courses within an area), or explore various applications of the URS skill set (courses across areas). Focus areas help students ground the URS major in real-world issues, practices, and career paths. The classes in the focus areas are classes students will likely take in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th years. Students are encouraged to take four elective courses, two of which should be in CRP.
Focus areas are optional elective courses for students to explore areas of interest. We list a range of classes within CRP and elsewhere for each area. Because the focus areas are optional, students can sample from focus areas a la carte or take as much of the series as they like.
- Focus areas include at least two upper-level undergraduate CRP classes along with classes from other departments on Campus.
- Focus areas include courses that engage with themes in national, regional and global contexts, spanning geographies and ways of knowing.
- Focus areas are suggestions to help students direct their studies and complement and enrich the URS degree.
- Focus areas suggest courses that enable students to deepen methods and practices in the pathway theme.
Focus Areas:
- Planning, policy, and urban design
- Climate change and sustainable cities
- Urban data science, technology, in the city
- Inequality and urban life
- Real estate, housing, and urban economics
B.S. URS Learning Outcomes
The bachelor of science degree in urban and regional studies prepares graduates to:
- Engage with critical environmental, social, political, and economic themes in urban and regional studies in the US and around the world.
- Examine and explain patterns of inequality and injustice across different areas of policy, history, and geography.
- Analyze different perspectives that shape city and regional histories, dynamics, and trajectories.
- Critically read, contextualize, and integrate theoretical, practical, and engaged work.
- Apply social-science reasoning through quantitative, qualitative, spatial, visual, and collaborative methods.
- Address ethical questions in urban and regional contexts at various scales.
- Communicate ideas through oral, graphic, and written modalities.
B.S. URS Policies
B.S. URS students are expected to complete all URS degree requirements and comply with college and program rules. Any deviation must be petitioned prior to the act. Failure to comply with department rules may result in review by the college Academic Review Committee.
B.S. URS Class Requirements
- Students may not use any one class to meet more than one specific requirement (i.e., if a student takes a statistics class to meet the Mathematics and Quantitative Reasoning distribution requirement, that same statistics class may not be used to meet the statistics requirement).
- For classes that satisfy any specific requirement (i.e., distribution requirements, core requirements for the major, and CRP required courses), the class must be successfully completed with a letter grade, unless a particular class is offered exclusively under the satisfactory/unsatisfactory grading basis (SX/UX).
- Students may not satisfy any distribution requirement, core requirement for the major, or required CRP class requirement with a class completed for fewer than 3 credits.
- The required core classes for the major and the five required CRP classes at the 3000-level must be completed at Cornell.
Advanced Placement Credit
The general college advanced placement credit policies apply, in addition to the URS-specific policy below:
For URS students, AP credit is applied as free elective credit only, with the exception of up to one First-Year Writing Seminar. URS students may not apply AP credit to core major requirements or distribution requirements.
Please refer to the AP section of this catalog for additional university guidelines regarding AP credit .
Additional Information for Transfer Students
To ensure a timely transfer of credit, incoming transfer students are required to submit final transcripts immediately upon acceptance. Students should also meet with the director of undergraduate studies and the AAP Registrar during orientation to review how their credits are applied toward the Cornell degree and for course enrollment planning.
Students who transfer into the URS program must successfully complete:
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