Parks and Public Spaces
This seminar course introduces students to the design, management, and maintenance of parks and public spaces. The course is particularly focused on questions of community, and foregrounds how issues of race, class, and culture interact to shape access to, and inclusion in, public spaces. Throughout the semester, we focus on the multiple layers of public space, including parks, plazas, sidewalks, and streets. Each week in this discussion-based, hands-on, interactive course, students examine key case studies, hear from guest lecturers, and/or conduct site visits to public spaces throughout the Denver metropolitan region.

Planning Capstone
The capstone course represents the culmination of what the student has learned during the MURP program. A MURP Capstone is a real-world, client-based planning project. Working with a real client enables students to apply their creativity and problem-solving abilities in a real-world context and demonstrate their professional competencies to both the faculty and potential employers. Students work with a client organization or agency to complete a project that is of significance and practical use to the organization. By the end of the Capstone semester, the student will produce a professional-quality project deliverable that addresses the client’s needs and conforms to the MURP program’s expectations for quality graduate-level work.

Planning Workshop
This course is the core introductory studio for MURP students. Planning Workshop provides students an opportunity to address actual planning problems, issues, and processes; apply previously acquired knowledge and skills; and develop new knowledge and practical skills in an applied context. Students will develop basic competence in accessing existing information, generating new information, and performing planning analysis and synthesis. Students will also learn to enhance their graphic, written, and oral communication capabilities. Through the Planning Workshop experience, students will develop an understanding of the relationship between planning theory and practice, as well as gain the ability to formulate compelling planning arguments in applied settings.

PhD Colloquium
This course is designed to help doctoral students develop the skills and capacities necessary for a career in academia, research, or policy-making. The colloquium centers on the presentation, defense, and critique of research. Through readings, assignments, and in-class discussions and activities, students describe their research interests at different levels of specificity and to different audiences; review the research of their peers and scholars in their areas of academic interest; present their research to an academic audience; and offer, and receive, constructive critique of research ideas, questions and methodologies.

Social Justice and the City
This course introduces students to the topic of social justice as it relates to planning and the city. We focus both on higher order social-theoretical questions related to the origins of the concept of justice and on applications of justice to and in the city, particularly as they relate to issues of uneven development, gentrification, poverty, food justice, homelessness, environmental justice, vulnerable populations, immigrants and refugees, the right to the city, public housing, segregation, affordable housing, social exclusion, and public space.

Form and Formation of Cities
This course investigates the origins and types of human settlements, the history of cities and urbanization, urban morphology and the evolution of the built environment, urban form principles and theory, types of urbanism, and the history of Denver’s built environment and planning. 

Planning History and Theory 
This course comprehensively reviews the major historical and theoretical developments in planning; the human aspects of planning as a social, political, and community-oriented process; public engagement; social justice; planning advocacy; and the future of planning. 

Urban Design Studio I 
Advanced interdisciplinary design studio intended to advance student’s comprehensive understanding, capability and technical skill across ecological, social, economic and aesthetic variables. Students engage landscape and design issues of various scales and complexities. In this offering, students explored storm water infrastructure solutions and established a program plan for a more sustainable, amenity-driven, multi-functional storm water system in Downtown Denver. Taught with Bill Wenk of Wenk Associates, Todd Wenskoski of RNL Design and Peter Park, City of Denver Planning Director.

Planning Methods I 
Course focus on qualitative and quantitative data collection, analysis and communication in a planning context. Recent projects include Denver Urban Inventory, Planter Analysis (examples 1, 2, 3) for client Downtown Denver Partnership, Peer Cities Analysis (client: Downtown Denver Partnership), and a physical assessment of all bus stops in the Westside Transit Enhancement Project (client: Denver Public Works Department).

Planning Studio II
Advanced urban planning studio working with real client on real project to produce a design and management scheme for the public plaza fronting Denver Union Station. The studio won the Colorado-APA Award for best student project of 2008.

City Design Policy
Course focuses on the historical and current production of the built environment, analyzing the creation of standards and codes in the city building process. Students trace the evolution of zoning and land use regulation and explore the relationship between public and private actors in this complex and often convoluted place making process. The course examines how social, economic, political and cultural forces affect urban built form as well as the interrelations between physical design, urban morphology, land use regulations and market trends shaping the urban environment.

City Building 
This course provides an understanding of how and why certain policies, politics and powerful interests produce cities and built environments in a particular fashion. But it moves beyond a singular focus on urban politics and asks what role(s) the planner can play in this production. The course outlines the building blocks of cities and uses extensive case studies to tease out which mechanisms are necessary for building “the good city.”

Urban Form Theory
Course focuses on the form and formation of the built environment and the position of physical planning and design within the broader fields of urban development. Students will recognize how social, economic, political and cultural forces shape the city, paying particular attention to the crucial links between design and society and how certain formal elements can create or sustain diversity and interaction.

Planning Public Space – Rutgers University
Student work focuses predominantly on solving problems associated with the provision, design and management of public parks, plazas and rights of way. Students develop a critical understanding of the various factors influencing public space planning such as privatization, corporate interests and design standards, while tackling difficult issues of discrimination, the homeless and urban social movements.

People and Places – Temple University
Initial course in the undergraduate program in Community and Regional Planning introduces students to the major debates on the form and formation of cities. Students investigate communities and regions from physical, economic, political and social perspectives using a variety of materials; a major objective of the course is to develop a basic understanding of how humans shape and are shaped by the built environment.

Principles of Urban Planning – Rutgers University
Provides Urban Studies majors with a theoretical, practical and political understanding of the urban planning process. The course surveys the historical development of cities, urban society and culture, the history of urban planning, and several substantive planning areas such as housing, zoning, transportation and environmental sustainability. Co-instructor: Ralph Buehler.

Urban Design and Redevelopment – Rutgers University
Seminar cross-listed as undergrad/grad course. Students discuss the principles and practice of physical planning and design, while introducing important factors influencing urban redevelopment such as community participation, historic preservation, and eminent domain. A major objective of the course is to help students develop practical tools necessary for creating innovative and successful urban design projects. Co-instructor: Hsui-Tzu (Betty) Chang.