Urban and Regional Studies (BS)

College of Architecture, Art and Planning

Program Website

Program Description

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.

Academic Standards

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

  1. 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 statistics requirement, that same statistics class may not be used to meet the Mathematics and Quantitative Reasoning distribution requirement).
  2. 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).
  3. 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.
  4. The required core classes for the major and the five required CRP classes at the 3000-level must be completed at Cornell.

Focus Areas

Focus areas are not degree requirements, they are purely optional.

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

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 Credit By Exam section of this catalog for additional university guidelines regarding AP credit.

Transfer Credit

The general college transfer credit policies apply to all transfer coursework, in addition to the URS-specific processes and policies below:

  • AAP 1100, CRP 1103, CRP 1104, CRP 2100, CRP 2200, the required Engaged Learning course, and the five required CRP classes cannot be satisfied with transfer credit; these classes must be taken at Cornell University.

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:

  • A minimum of four semesters in residence
  • A minimum of 60 academic credits at Cornell
  • 30 of the 60 credits must include the six required courses for the major (AAP 1100, CRP 1103, CRP 1104,  CRP 2100, CRP 2200, and the required Engaged Learning course) and the five required upper level CRP courses.

Honors Program

URS offers qualified students the opportunity to write an honors thesis. To qualify for honors, students must at least have completed the junior year, completed four semesters registered in URS, have a cumulative GPA of 3.5, a GPA of 3.7 in the major (including the micro economics and statistics requirements), and have completed at least 10 of the 13 major courses. In exceptional cases, the faculty will consider a petition to waive an eligibility requirement. Once accepted, an honors student selects a faculty adviser and develops and writes a thesis with close guidance. Theses must be seventy-five or fewer pages.

Participation in the Honors Program requires completion of CRP 4920 Undergraduate Honors Thesis Research  in the fall semester for four academic credits and CRP 4930 Undergraduate Honors Thesis Writing in the spring semester for an additional four academic credits.