Auburn Bulletin 2023-2024

Community Planning — MCP

The Community Planning Program at Auburn University is a professionally oriented master's degree program that focuses on the skills that professional planners need for practice in an interactive and interdisciplinary environment. The centerpiece of the program is the opportunity for students and faculty to engage with under-served communities throughout Alabama and the Southeast through outreach, teaching, and engaged research. Through working on projects with communities throughout Alabama and the Southeast, students learn to help diverse and complex communities create and implement plans that improve and protect their quality-of-life, culture, resource base, built environment, natural environment, and economic vitality.

The Master of Community Planning (MCP) is a professional, non-thesis degree. Students will normally earn the degree in two academic years by successfully completing 45 credit hours of course work, including two capstone plan-making workshops. The program offers dual degree options with public administration, and landscape architecture (each of which requires a separate application). Enhanced opportunities for interdisciplinary teaching and learning are offered by the program’s distinctive Alabama City Year Program, in which the program focuses on one city in the Southeast each year and students complete multiple outreach and engagement projects in that city in each of their classes.

Master of Community Planning (45 credit hours)

CodeTitleHours
CPLN 6010Introduction to Community Planning3
CPLN 6050Land and Urban Economics3
CPLN 6460Geographic Information Systems for Planning and Policy3
CPLN 7200Urban Design Studio3
CPLN 7240Quantitative Methods for Planning3
or POLI 7000 Research Methods for Public and Nonprofit Organizations
CPLN 7300Community-Based Qualitative Methods3
CPLN 7350Planning History and Theory3
CPLN 7430Land Use Law3
CPLN 7600Synthesis Studio I3
CPLN 7610Synthesis Studio 23
Electives (with MCP director approval)15
Total Hours45