Some arch courses on my belt before I start my MUP?

[manoverde84]

OK, so I am studying for the GRE and getting everything ready to apply to an MUP program. The next app deadline is in November and I plan of deferring for a semester to make the big move from CA to TX.

In the meantime with the year off, I have the option of taking some arch courses at the local extention school at UCLA. They have great cheap courses in design, CAD, etc. I figured I could take a years worth of landscape architecture courses before moving on.

Would this even be worth it? I know it;s not a degree or anything but I figured it would look somewhat good on a resume to know some basics if I want to apply to other programs or for when I apply to some firms in the future.

What is your take on this?

[DetroitPlanner]

It depends on what you want to do. Remember architecture involves a lot more than just drawing. The right classes will allow you to understand the civil engineers or to interpret site plans. However depending upon what you want to do, you may never use these skills.

I took two years of architecture before switching to Geography/Urban Studies. I don't regret it, but if I had to do it over I would have jumped right into what I got my degrees in.

[manoverde84]

Well I want to do urban design and work for a design firm. I can't be picky of course but generally that's where I want to go.

What fields would those course be useful? I just don't want to pass up the opportunity.

[kjel]

Well I want to do urban design and work for a design firm. I can't be picky of course but generally that's where I want to go.

What fields would those course be useful? I just don't want to pass up the opportunity.

CAD is always useful.

[manoverde84]

That is what I figured considering that I had a friend in Houston who just took a couple of CAD courses at the local CC and ended up knowing a guy who hooked him up with a big job as a drafter (I think, don't quote me). So I know those courses are useful.

No design courses though?

[manoverde84]

Anyone else?

[Raf]

Save yourself the enormous expense of a "extension" UCLA course and just enroll in one of the many fine junior colleges that will offer the same design principles taught across the board for a fraction of the cost. By fraction, i mean fraction. At $46 dollar a unit with a four unit class is $148, whereas exention course can run in the thousands of dollars, but teach the same thing. Do the math. In both instances, you a learning. Who cares about the name.

[popbz]

I took AutoCAD and GIS classes in my year between undergrad and grad school. I ended up landing a Junior Planner job at an private planning/engineering/survey company prior starting my masters program. I do a lot of CAD work (ie site plans, tmaps, etc) and there are only 4 planners in our company. I know applicants with planning degrees were interviewed, so I think the CAD background really helped me.

[manoverde84]

Should I look for a JC with a specific design focus to their arch/design courses or just stick with the arch tech ones? Are they all the same?

Could someone give me a quick rundown of the right courses to take? Just a small list.

[popbz]

The two classes I took at the JC were Introduction to GIS and Introducation to AUTOCAD. here are the two course descriptions from the schools' websites.

" This course examines the theory behind Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and their application to spatial data. This course is designed to take an interdisciplinary approach to GIS and demonstrate its capability for analysis and decision-making in diverse industries and academic disciplines. Students will use ARC GIS software."

"Introduces the fundamental operating principles of AutoCAD drafting/design software. Uses AutoCAD for Windows to create and revise two-dimensional drawings. This is a foundation course that can lead to advanced study in a variety of drafting and design fields."

[manoverde84]

That's all you took and you got a junior planner position? Wow! That's amazing. Is that normal or did you know some people? His did you pull that off?

Also what's the starting pay for something like that?

Here I was planning to take a slew of courses, a years worth.

How for you present that on your résumé?

[Vancity]

The two classes I took at the JC were Introduction to GIS and Introducation to AUTOCAD. here are the two course descriptions from the schools' websites.

" This course examines the theory behind Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and their application to spatial data. This course is designed to take an interdisciplinary approach to GIS and demonstrate its capability for analysis and decision-making in diverse industries and academic disciplines. Students will use ARC GIS software."

"Introduces the fundamental operating principles of AutoCAD drafting/design software. Uses AutoCAD for Windows to create and revise two-dimensional drawings. This is a foundation course that can lead to advanced study in a variety of drafting and design fields."

All you took was 2 courses... and you were able to get a job that relies on these programs?
That's amazing.. I have taken a GIS course and still feel that I don't know how to use the software proficiently... Maybe my school is not so good

[akshali2000]

If you are looking to take classes just for your knowledge, there are probably tons of planning or design related free online classes through websites like Coursera or other online education providers.

[Raf]

All you took was 2 courses... and you were able to get a job that relies on these programs?
That's amazing.. I have taken a GIS course and still feel that I don't know how to use the software proficiently... Maybe my school is not so good

Honestly a course in GIS and CAD won't teach you the ins and outs. It takes years. Back in the day, which was a wednesday, I had to fumble around ArcView 3.2 just to figure out how to do things on my own time, or burn up time at my internship unpaid to do the cool things my boss demanded. From there, I used that info from hands on learning and took it back to school and kept plugging away, using it when i could for projects even though it didn't demand it.

CAD was a two week session in school. I thought it was cool. So i starting using CAD and learning how to take hand sketches, scan, and than draft them. My 1st job taught me how to do it better. I refined CAD skills for almost 7 years. Always learning cool things.

Courses give you the basics. From there, it is a commitment to learn is what keeps you in the game.

[Burnham]

I got a masters in planning, worked for several years, and then eventually went back for an M Arch. If you want to design work, don't kid yourself, even if you area able to get enough skills to draw master plans and diagrams, your career options will be very limited if you don't just get a design degree. The fact is, an MUP, like many masters degrees, is a piece of paper and an opportunity to build some valuable relationships. It is similar to an MBA, you learn a few applicable skills, but the degree really is not about the skills, it is about a rite of passage to enter the profession. By contrast, a studio-based design degree, an M Arch or an MLA, is a REAL degree - you leave the program a COMPLETELY different person than the one you were when you entered. The degree is not a replacement for your own creativity (as others have noted), you must have that as well, but you will discover that in the studio - you learn about yourself and you develop your design ability. To be quite honest, in contrast to what others have said, the standards/dimensions are not the most important thing you learn in design school, nor is it the software and graphics skills (although both of these are certainly essential); design is a set of "soft skills" that you must develop through a long-term commitment to the art.

Most planners who claim to be design-minded, have really just memorized a few principles and best practices, such as street-building relationship, scale issues, and maybe some street width dimensions. There is a reason that the New Urbanism is so popular among planners - it is a set of easily understandable rules that non-designers can memorize. However, knowing best practices is NOT the same thing as design. Design is about taking a set of conditions and MAKING something out of them. In real design, there is no textbook, there is no template, there is only your ability as the designer to solve the problem at hand. And if you are good, you can solve the problem AND enhance the experience of the user. You can make place. You can make poetry.

I wish I could go back and save the two years I spent in planning school. After years of school and working in the field, I am confident that the absolute truth is this: if you want to be a DESIGNER-designer, get an M Arch; if you want to be a PLANNER-designer, get an MLA. City planning, and certainly urban design, IS a design discipline; however, city planners are not typically designers, and this is a major problem. This means that most of the professionals who are in the field are not actually equipped to do the job. It is not the architects (or really even the developers) who are to blame for the lousy built environment in our country, it is the PLANNERS themselves, and the wide-spread professional malpractice on the part of the city planning profession who are not trained to do the job they are paid to do. Planners, in general, are spatially incompetent and design illiterate. This comes as a result of the fact that city planners are not trained in city design and city building. Landscape architecture absolutely can (and quite frankly should) replace the profession of city planning within the next 15 or so years. LAs are far more equipped, due to their design training, to deal with the planning problems facing cities and regions in America than the so-called planners.

A note on MUDs: Something that often gets overlooked on this site and in other forums when talking about MUD degrees is the fact that the very existence of a special "masters in urban design" is largely the result of design schools (architecture and landscape architecture programs) moving into the realm of urban planning to fill the void left by the actual urban planning discipline within academia. City planning programs have largely refused to address the physical conditions of cities (a latent result of advocacy planning and other well-intentioned but misguided movements within the discipline over the past few decades) and MUD degrees are an attempt to train the more traditional design practitioners to scale up to the urban, metropolitan, and regional scales. MUDs are very useful as a mode of training those already versed in design to become planners. They are, by contrast, probably not so useful to planners without a design background.

The short of it is this: JUST GET A DESIGN DEGREE!! It will be well worth the time and energy you invest in it. If you just put in the time to get a real design degree (not MUD, not MUP - unless it is a dual with MARCH or MLA), you will never need to be self-conscious about your skills or about the value you bring to a project. You will have wide career opportunities (in consulting firms, in public sector, on your own, as a planner, as a designer, etc.) Plus, studio design education is so much more enjoyable than planning education! I loved architecture school! It was tough, but so incredibly rewarding. By contrast, planning school was a money and time sink without the payback. JUST GET A DESIGN DEGREE!!!! (I wish I had listened to the people who told me that when I was starting planning school....)

[popbz]

Honestly a course in GIS and CAD won't teach you the ins and outs. It takes years. Back in the day, which was a wednesday, I had to fumble around ArcView 3.2 just to figure out how to do things on my own time, or burn up time at my internship unpaid to do the cool things my boss demanded. From there, I used that info from hands on learning and took it back to school and kept plugging away, using it when i could for projects even though it didn't demand it.

CAD was a two week session in school. I thought it was cool. So i starting using CAD and learning how to take hand sketches, scan, and than draft them. My 1st job taught me how to do it better. I refined CAD skills for almost 7 years. Always learning cool things.

Courses give you the basics. From there, it is a commitment to learn is what keeps you in the game.

Just like RAF said, it takes a lot to be familiar with CAD. School gave me the basic fundamentals, but I have learned so much on the job. The M.U.P. program I am attending does not require any CAD classes, so I decided to take one to set myself a little apart from others.