Department of Urban and Regional Planning

College of Social Sciences
Saunders Hall 107
2424 Maile Way
Honolulu, HI 96822
Tel: (808) 956-7381
Fax: (808) 956-6870
Email: idurp@hawaii.edu
Web: manoa.hawaii.edu/durp

Faculty

*A. Das, PhD (Chair)—community participation and empowerment, urban informality, slum upgrading, decentralization and local governance, role of civil society in development, inclusive urbanization
*M. Coffman, PhD—environmental planning, energy and climate change policy, resource management, system modeling
*P. Das, PhD—water governance, urban environmental services, urban poverty, climate adaptation, urban form, resilient design, planning pedagogy

*E.M. French, PhD—climate adaptation, collaborative governance, participatory planning, climate justice, collective care
*K. E. Kim, PhD—risk assessment, risk management, disaster management and humanitarian assistance, transportation, traffic safety, resilience, environmental management, advanced methods, GIS, spatial statistics, categorical data analysis, and evacuation modeling
*D, Milz—environmental planning, dispute resolution, facilitation, community engagement, participatory/collaborative planning, resilience
*J. Park, PhD—urban economics, residential segregation in U.S. cities and its impact on household welfare, opportunity, and intergenerational mobility
*S. Raj, PhD—climate change, food systems planning, climate adaptation planning, and environmental planning
*S. Shen, PhD—GIS, climate change impact, critical infrastructure vulnerability, risk perception and adaptation

Cooperating Graduate Faculty

*D. L. Callies, JD—land use management and control, intergovernmental relations
*W. Chapman, PhD—historic preservation
*J. Darrah-Okike, PhD—urban and political sociology, race and ethnicity, international migration
*D. Eversole, BS—coastal hazard mitigation and climate adaptation

M. Fisher, PhD—political ecology; environmental governance; forest/agrarian change; climate adaptation; and Indonesia
*K. Freitas, PhD—indigenous planning
*M. Glick, MS—energy policy and innovation
B. Houghton, PhD—volcanology, hazards, and society
*D. Lerner, PhD—environmental physiology of fishes, environmental contaminants’ affect on fish growth, physiology, and behavior
*D. McGregor, PhD—Hawaiian history, social movements in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific
*K. Suryanata, PhD—political ecology, agriculture, rural development in Asia
*B. Szuster, PhD—coastal land conservation, impact of human development activities

Affiliate Graduate Faculty

*P. Flachsbart, PhD—transit-oriented development, neighborhood planning, environmental psychology, human exposure to air pollution

*P. Harirchi, PhD—plan evaluation, natural hazards and resilience, transportation planning, geospatial/GIS analysis
*K. Kawamoto, PhD—social capital, environmental planning, disaster management
*V. Keener, PhD—applied interdisciplinary hydrology & climatology; climate adaptation & policy in Pacific Islands
*L. Kong, PhD—tsunami warning & mitigation systems
*P. Pant, PhD—transportation planning, economics, safety, & resilience
*M. Parke, PhD—land use suitability for wastewater reuse, Geographical Information Systems, remote sensing and Unmanned Aerial Systems for natural resource monitoring
*D. Sakamoto—community-based; sustainable urban planning, urban design, and architecture; resilient building design for coastal communities
*S. Saksena, PhD—urban environment, environmental risk analysis, emerging infectious diseases, health disparities, peri-urbanization, transport and air pollution, citizen science, Asia-Pacific
*K. Turner—sustainable economic development policy, planning, energy policy
*K. Tibbetts, PhD—evaluation design & implementation

*R. Uyeno, PhD—tourism/destination planning and management, disaster management, statistics

Emeritus Faculty

*R. Kwok, PhD—urban planning, political economy of chinese development, urbanization, globalization in East Asia, spatial planning, cultural impact on urban design
*C. M. Douglass, PhD—urbanization in Asia, rural-urban linkages, spatial planning theory, community and civic space, and migration
*L. Minerbi, DottArch—comparative urbanism, land use and environmental planning, sustainability, Pacific Islands planning

* Graduate Faculty

The Academic Program

Urban and regional planning is a dynamic field that is growing steadily and evolving continually. Its purpose is to respond to the compounding challenges of societies in an inexorably urbanizing world, which requires innovative and sensitively tailored solutions from adequately trained, committed, informed, and empathetic individuals. Historically, it emerged from the need to respond to two concerns that grew with urbanization: (1) the provision of urban infrastructure; and (2) the initiation of social reform. Today, the underlying focus on community well-being continues, but the ambit of urban and regional planning has broadened significantly. It includes the creation, implementation, and evaluation of policies and initiatives to address a wide range of sociospatial needs and inequities pertaining to infrastructure and services, the environment, housing, transportation and mobility, economic development, climate events and disasters, economic prosperity, urban form, heritage preservation, culture, and Indigenous communities.

Specifically, urban and regional planners are concerned with:

The use of land in the city, suburbs, and rural areas, particularly to facilitate the transition from one use to another, and, increasingly, the mixing of multiple uses;
Mitigating potentially adverse impacts of human activities on the environment;
The design of communities at various scales - neighborhood, city, and region - to facilitate productive social engagement and activities;
The siting of settlements, economic activities, and other systemic functions in urban and regional space;
The identification of social needs and the design and provision of services and facilities to meet those;
The (re)distribution of resources, benefits and costs among people fairly and effectively;
Anticipating structural changes - demographic, physical, environmental, economic, etc. - and their impacts on how people’s lives and livelihoods;
The participation of citizens in planning processes that affect their present being and future lives;
How planning choices are made, decisions implemented, and actions evaluated, and how they could be improved.

The academic programs in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning (DURP):

Enable a multidisciplinary approach to planning education recognizing the valuable contributions of the social and natural sciences, architectural and landscape design, and the public health, social work, and engineering fields;
Emphasize extensive community and multi-stakeholder involvement;
Engage in research that focuses on the application of planning methodologies and implementation of planning endeavors;
Recognize the close relationship of planning outcomes to power and politics;
Acknowledge that the difficulty in addressing many planning problems stems from differences in values and epistemic perspectives, recognizing, respecting, and resolving which are critical for their effective resolution;
Reaffirm upholding the concept of “the public interest” as vital to good urban and regional planning.

DURP’s nearly 700 Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) graduates hold positions in planning and related professions in a variety of public agencies, academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, and private firms in Hawaiʻi, the continental United States, and the Asia Pacific region.

Accreditation

The Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) degree is fully accredited by the Planning Accreditation Board.

4+1 Bachelor’s and Master’s (BAM) Combined Degree Pathways

Combined Bachelor’s & Master’s Degree (BAM) Pathways afford a way for highly motivated students to efficiently complete a Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree in a shorter time frame by double-counting course work (3 courses) at the undergraduate tuition rate. In most cases, pathway students graduate with the Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree within 5 years (total). Currently, DURP offers three such BAM pathways that lead to the MURP degree.

4+1 BAM BS Global Environmental Science and MURP
4+1 BAM BA Hawaiian Studies and MURP
4+1 BAM BA Interdisciplinary Studies: Sustainability and MURP

Graduate Study

The department offers a multidisciplinary approach to planning education. Students are provided with an opportunity to develop an individualized but integrated course of study drawing on the offerings at DURP and other departments and professional schools in UH Mānoa. Faculty and students engage in both funded and non-funded research, under faculty supervision, and experience working closely with communities. The graduate curriculum focuses on theory, methodology, and practice in the following areas: community planning; environmental planning and sustainability; international development planning; land use, transportation and infrastructure planning; and disaster management and humanitarian assistance (DMHA). A common emphasis is planning in the Asia-Pacific region .

For further information regarding the MURP degree or certificate programs, students should contact the department.

Programs

Master’s

Urban and Regional Planning, MURP

Doctorate

Urban and Regional Planning, PhD

Graduate Certificate