Virginia Tech

The mission of the Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) at Virginia Tech is to prepare students to become professional planners, who can address the economic, environmental, and social consequences of growth and change, and to provide leadership in fostering a more just and sustainable world through our teaching, scholarship, and service. Upon completion of our program we expect students to:

1. Understand human settlements and their physical, social, economic, and environmental context; the theoretical, historical, and legal foundations of planning and contemporary planning practice; and the range of values associated with diverse communities at all scales and the ethical means of discriminating among competing goals.
    
2. Be at the forefront of envisioning, creating, and sustaining communities that are just and economically and environmentally sustainable.
    
3. Be able to confront complex problems in a systematic and rigorous way by applying the core concepts, skills, and evidence-based techniques and strategies of planning practice, including plan creation; and be competent in generic problem solving, critical thinking, collaborative processes with diverse groups of stakeholders, quantitative and qualitative analysis and synthesis methods, and computer applications.
    
4. Be versed in the complexity of global changes and local planning solutions and possess solid knowledge of national and international best planning practices.
    
5. Have the leadership, collaborative and written, visual and oral communicative skills necessary to function successfully as a planning professional.

Our two locations (Blacksburg, VA and Washington, D.C. metro region) provide unique opportunities for planning education and research, with dynamic interactions between faculty and students.