School of City and Reginal Planning Program Spotlight

Situated in the heart of Atlanta, the School of City and Regional Planning is an internationally recognized leader in education and research. Each day, students, faculty, and researchers work to create new knowledge and tools for making cities more sustainable, resilient, and just. By leveraging the finest technological resources and diverse expertise at Georgia Tech, they are on the front lines of pressing urban, environmental, economic, and community development issues.

COMMUNITY

Graduate students come to the School from across the United States and around the world with ambitions to solve the world’s most vexing problems, and after graduation become leaders in
the city planning profession, the development industry, the non-profit sector, and academia. An active network of more than 1,300 alumni, including many of Atlanta’s and Georgia’s top
planners and policy makers, work in 49 U.S. states and territories and 29 countries. A research-led and highly interdisciplinary community of scholars, the School faculty includes six Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners, the editors of the Journal of Planning Education and Research, and former chief operating officers of the Atlanta Regional Commission, the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, and the Atlanta City Planning department.

RESEARCH

Situated within one of the premier research universities in the world, the School’s faculty, research centers, and labs integrate planning-related research directly into the classroom and community outreach projects. Faculty researchers are responsible for an average of more than $2 million per year of externally funded research each year. Georgia Tech is home to six research centers that work closely with planning faculty and students:

• Center for Quality Growth and Regional development
• Center for Geographic Information Systems
• Enterprise Innovation Institute
• Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems
• National Center for Transportation Productivity & Management
• Urban Climate Lab

Among the many recent awards earned by Tech faculty and students are the top student planning awards of the American Planning Association (2012) and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (2010).
Tech maintains a tradition of engaged education through collaboration with both high performing firms and needy agencies in the region.