Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS)

The Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS) is a one-year program designed for mid-career professionals from developing countries. SPURS was founded in 1967 as part of MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), which has a long-standing commitment to enabling qualified individuals to expand their expertise in the field of international development. The program is designed to allow individuals, often at a turning point in their professional careers, to spend a year at MIT broadening their perspectives and enhancing their policy-making and planning skills. SPURS Fellows have returned to their countries with new abilities for addressing complex national, regional and local development issues. Over its 40-year history, SPURS has hosted nearly 600 women and men from 90 countries in Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern and Central Europe.

Most SPURS Fellows are drawn to DUSP by its large, world-renowned faculty of practitioners interested in urban and regional issues. Participating in SPURS allows Fellows to step back from their day-to-day struggles in the developing world and provides them with a critical opportunity for reflection, learning and renewal. While at DUSP, SPURS Fellows immerse themselves in a supportive academic environment where they can freely exchange ideas with colleagues who are expert in and sympathetic to issues facing developing countries. They are exposed to new theories and approaches from other Fellows, faculty and other practitioners, which they can later apply at home. In addition, the experience helps them to develop strong, positive connections with North American institutions.

SPURS provides an opportunity for a select group of highly qualified professionals to spend a year at MIT studying problems of urban and regional change in the broader context of international development. The Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) is home to the largest planning faculty in the United States. The International Development Group (IDG) at DUSP, which hosts the SPURS program, also offers the greatest number of courses devoted exclusively to international development planning in the nation. SPURS Fellows have the opportunity to work with eleven of the most distinguished faculty in the area of international development planning, as well as with dozens of experts in other areas at MIT, Harvard, Tufts, and Boston University.