[1] The School has no formal rector or dean system; it is operated by Associação Escola da Cidade, a nonprofit association of architects, fine artists, and public intellectuals, and managed by five boards.

The campus is entirely urban and occupies two buildings in the Vila Buarque neighborhood of central São Paulo, originally designed in the 1940s as apartment blocks by Oswaldo Bratke.

[2] In addition to a regular library open to the general public (Biblioteca Vilanova Artigas) and a university press (Editora da Cidade), the School also operates Baú, a "student-run... audiovisual repository of all knowledge produced at Escola da Cidade".

[3] The undergraduate curriculum for first-year through fourth-year students includes one mandatory overseas trip per semester, in a program known as Escola Itinerante (Itinerant School).

[5] The School's only degree-granting program, the six-year Bachelor of Architecture and Urban Planning, has been fully accredited by the Brazilian Ministry of Education and Culture since 2001.