Rank of UBC in North America

[higgicd]

The Planetizen rankings are well known, but I am wondering how the University of British Columbia would fare in comparison to the top urban planning schools in the US.

It is a goal of mine to be admitted to UCLA or UC Berkeley for a PhD, but how would UBC fare against these schools?

I have heard it is the best in Canada for planning, but that might not say a lot in the North American context.

I am specifically interested in Transportation Policy, if that helps things. Working with Cervero at Berkeley would be the bees knees, making UCLA my second choice. And being Canadian, going to UBC has its benefits as well.

Do help!

[hipp5]

This is in no way official, but merely my experiences with other planning students in the country.

UBC seems to be the best in terms of academic planning. By that I mean a lot of time is spent on theory. This might be of benefit to you if you want to go on to do a PhD. My other thought is that if you're interested in transportation planning you might do well just to stay in Toronto. They seem to have a really good transportation program there with good connections with the civil engineering department.

[theblindsage]

UBC is fairly prestigious, but only in certain concentrations. If you are looking into sustainability, or equitable governance, it's the place to go. If you are looking for economics or transportation, go elsewhere.

I'm interested in transportation as well, and decided UBC was a poor match. UCLA and USC were pretty impressive.

SPEA at Bloomington looked good.
http://www.indiana.edu/~spea/faculty/index.shtml

Both NYU and MIT had some really good stuff.
Columbia's program was very design oriented. Not a good match.

Faculty research interest lists will tell you something about what goes on at a given university, but the research centers are certainly worth looking at.

I'd like to plug my alma mater - U of U has Reid Ewing and Arthur C. Nelson.