Wes McRae | Atlanta, GA – May 8, 2026

A team of Master of City and Regional Planning (MCRP) students took top honors in the American Planning Association's (APA) 2026 Student Planning and Design Competition. The final phase of the competition took place at the APA's recent National Planning Conference in Detroit.

"Winning the 2026 APA Student Planning and Design Competition, the most prestigious student award at the National Planning Conference, is an extraordinary achievement for our program," said Gulsah Akar, chair of the School of City and Regional Planning. "To secure first place in a field of finalists that included University of Michigan and Harvard [ranked seventh in  demonstrates our students' leadership and technical excellence."

"By developing innovative, real-life solutions for this year's host city, our team has proven they are ready to meet the challenges of growth and change with vision and integrity."

Maria Del Valle, Nick Lucovsky, Meryl Pawlick, Andrew Sarphie, and Emma Uppelschoten formed Georgia Tech's team, Terminus. All are in the first year of the MCRP program, currently ranked sixth in the nation by Planetizen. Lucovsky is in the dual Master of Architecture program, while Sarphie is also pursuing a dual degree with a Master of Science in Civil Engineering.

The first-year team beat teams from Harvard, currently ranked seventh, and UCLA, ranked first.

"The focus in the first year of the MCRP program on foundational planning theory was massively integral to our success in this competition," Uppelschoten said in a team email response. "We understood the ways in which planners have historically approached small area plans and were able to build on those past precedents. Another hugely influential class was Ellen Dunham-Jones’ ‘Retrofitting Suburbia!’ Most of our case studies came either from that class specifically or from Ellen’s previous work."

For the competition, the APA challenged students to develop a small-area concept plan for a recently completed section of the Joe Louis Greenway, a recreational pathway that connects Detroit's neighborhoods, businesses, people, and parks. According to this year's competition prompt, proposals had to include a needs analysis, policy statements, site plans, 3D drawings and renderings related to the proposals, and an implementation plan.

"This prompt felt important for the community in Detroit because it highlighted the long-term impacts of deindustrialization, disinvestment, red-lining, and overall left-behindedness," Uppelschoten said. "The Joe Louis Greenway, the subject of the prompt, was designed in much the same theory as the Atlanta Beltline; to serve as a form of connection between a fragmented city."

"That’s ultimately a big reason that we ended up with the ‘Patchwork’ theme. We knew that vibrant and strong community-led revitalization efforts already existed in these neighborhoods, they just needed to be ‘stitched together.’" 

Bruce Stiftel, professor emeritus in the School, said the competition jury praised the team's "valuable, story-inspired response based on a strong concept, with powerful graphic use."

"This win feels particularly important to us as students new to the planning space," Uppelschoten said. "It means that we are headed in the right direction as future planners, and that our perspectives are valued in the wider planning ecosystem."