Physical Planning is land use planning at the site level.  The site may be as small as a city block in a redevelopment district or as large as a regional watershed management area.  Physical Planning includes site selection, site suitability analysis, development impact analysis, and mitigation.  Such assessment results in a better design for the site and in remediation measures; accordingly, plans for development or preservation of the site evolve in the context of that physical analysis.  Geographic Information Systems [GIS]and other techniques for dealing with information spatially are essential tools in Physical Planning.  Physical Planners also must use modeling techniques to understand how roads, utilities and other public systems will be affected by future development.  The visioning tools include urban design and the variety of site planning techniques.  The work of Physical Planners may be within either public or private sectors.  It may result in a range of appropriate design responses from adaptive reuse of defunct facilities, to urban renewal, to new town planning, and mindful of planning's commitment to environmental sustainability, land stewardship, and effective design.

The ensuing chart describes the core and elective courses for this ACS, beyond the common core curriculum and as applied to both standard and accelerated tracks: