The Challenge

Many communities throughout the U.S. are experiencing explosive suburban and urban growth. This rapid development increasingly threatens the quality of life for many residents as traffic congestion grows, infrastructure costs increase, and valuable open spaces are fragmented and lost. These pressures are most severe in once-rural communities near expanding metropolitan centers, and in gateway communities adjacent to national parks and other recreation areas. Across disciplines, professionals increasingly recognize the need for large-scale spatial planning that integrates the biophysical and socioeconomic features of the landscape. Bioregional planning provides an innovative framework for assessing these features and evaluating the likely impacts of various land use policies across both landscapes and time. This method of analysis allows stakeholders and decision makers the opportunity to generate a wide variety of future development alternatives in order to fully evaluate the consequences of growth.

Our program recognizes the importance of how the biophysical and socioeconomic attributes of a region interact to influence human settlement and culture. A primary objective of the program is to provide students with real-world learning experiences that make tangible community contributions by providing decision makers with appropriate methods and data to make informed decisions concerning the quality of growth in their communities. As a result, students in the Bioregional Planning Program interact directly with state and federal land management agencies, governmental and non-governmental organizations, and local planning commissions.

The 2-year master of science program relies upon an interdisciplinary core of courses and faculty for the purpose of addressing complex issues in the areas of environmental analysis, planning, and policy. The Program focuses on the planning of large regional landscapes with dispersed rural populations and an economic reliance on natural resources, agriculture, recreation, and tourism. The Program prepares students for leadership roles within an interdisciplinary environment, to provide better alternatives for decisions and policy implementation. Formal class work, seminars, planning studios, thesis research, and community workshops are just a few of the educational formats utilized to meet program objectives.