How do Arizona State and Columbia compare for studying urban studies?

The biggest practical difference is that Arizona State’s undergraduate path is built around urban planning as a professional, applied field, while Columbia’s Urban Studies major is a broader liberal-arts examination of cities shaped by New York City. At ASU, students can study land use, transportation, housing, environmental planning, GIS, and community development through the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning. Columbia emphasizes the historical, social, political, cultural, and economic forces that make urban life work, alongside its required Core Curriculum.

ASU is the more direct fit for someone who can picture doing planning work after college: analyzing maps and data, participating in studio-style projects, working with public agencies or developers, and preparing for a planning-related graduate degree or entry-level planning role. Its location in the Phoenix metropolitan area also gives the program a useful living laboratory for rapid growth, water and heat resilience, sprawl, transportation, and suburban development.

Columbia offers a distinctly interdisciplinary route. Its New York setting makes internships, field research, and coursework connected to housing policy, inequality, preservation, public space, immigration, and neighborhood change especially accessible. The program can be excellent preparation for policy, law, journalism, public service, real estate, community organizing, or graduate study, but students seeking technical planning training may need to deliberately choose quantitative, GIS, economics, or architecture-related electives.

For an aspiring urban planner who wants a structured, practice-oriented undergraduate education, Arizona State is the clearer choice. Columbia is the stronger match for a student who wants to study cities through multiple humanities and social-science lenses and use New York City as an extension of the classroom.