USC Landscape Architecture

The USC Landscape + Urbanism graduate program leads to an MLA degree and is designed to prepare graduates for careers in both practice and academia. In a world where landscape architecture is playing an increasingly vital role in urban and rural areas, this program equips students to contribute to the long-term stewardship of natural systems and the design of healthy, equitable communities. Our faculty and students are actively engaged in creative solutions to address our changing climate. We are designing adaptation to rising sea level rise, flooding, drought, extreme heat and wildfire. We are working to increase biodiversity in our cities and natural lands to address the threat of extinction to numerous species as identified by the ICUN. These challenges go beyond the typical scale of practice on traditional sites. We investigate and seek answers from the micro scale of bio materials to ever-increasing scales of urbanism. We desire not just to survive, but to thrive in the future.