Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology combines the vision of long range effects and swiftness of short range responses to develop new modes of representation and new forms of investigation to enable new methods of design.

Contemporary practices across the urban field are shaped by thinking from subjects as diverse as landscape and infrastructure, fuel and energy, economics and power, waste and water, food and flora, speed and mobility. Informed by systemic sensibilities, social capabilities, and multi-layered knowledge of the natural world, Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology is opening new currents of research and streams of practices for the urban disciplines. As measure and method on the hand, and as applied science and economic art on the other, the field of landscape is demonstrating the growth potential of design practices and modes of thinking expressed through the agency of ecology.

As a distinct concentration area within the Master in Design Studies program, Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology offers candidates who are spatially-minded and ecologically motivated to examine contemporary practices of design and dynamic modes of spatial production within a highly cross-disciplinary environment. Candidates are invited to construct their own program of study and stream of research from among the course offerings at the Graduate School of Design and across Harvard University. Recent research projects have included water and waste ecologies in relation to urbanization; non-formal settlements in relation to large-scale and ultra-rapid development; emergent geoeconomic forms and their impact on energy production and consumption in relation to urbanism; as well as advanced studies in landscape infrastructure, planetary urbanization, landscape urbanism, ecological urbanism, and infrastructure ecologies.