Urban Development and Design

Forecasts suggest that over the next 30 years, urban areas around the world will double in size. The Master of Urban Development and Design (MUDD) at UNSW is dedicated to preparing professionals contribute positively to this unprecedented move to urban ways of living.

Graduates from the Masters Program currently work in over 30 different countries around the world in locations as diverse as China, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, USA, Mexico, India and Australia.

The MUDD is a multidisciplinary program that explores the inter-relationship of urban development and design from an international perspective. Students learn to design cities within the rapidly developing urban territories of the Asia-Pacific region. Urban design is approached as a comparative discipline and cities from  Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and Australasia are examined through studio based design projects. The course explores both the universal values of urban environments, and the unique aspects of cities around the world.

In responding to the unprecedented pace and scale of urban growth in our time, the Master of Urban Development and Design seeks the creative synthesis of three urban research fields:

1. Spatial political economy – the manifestation in urban form of global patterns of capital formation, investment and disinvestment.
2. Urban design principles and paradigms  –  normative models of ‘good city form’ grounded in aesthetic, social and environmental concerns
3. Urban design as public policy – the intersection of public policy, design principles, the deal-making of the property sector and defence of the public realm.

The MUDD is a multidisciplinary program that explores the inter-relationship of urban development and design from an international perspective and is dedicated to a complex, development based design approach to the organisation of city form.