Urban Design and Planning

Develop your skills in urban design and the planning and the development of cities by studying both the UK urban experience and rapidly urbanising cities in Asia and Africa.

Course description

This innovative one-year masters is run jointly by the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the School of Architecture. The course will prepare you for a career in the planning and urban design professions and includes opportunities to learn about development and design issues faced in the Global South.

You'll learn about the factors that shape cities and rural areas, and gain a deeper knowledge of a selected specialist aspect of planning. The course will develop your research, policy making and design skills, and your understanding of how to apply research to public policy making and evaluation.

The course draws on leading teaching and research at the University, combining the urban design expertise of the School of Architecture and the international planning expertise of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. This interdisciplinary approach enables you to develop a distinctive approach to urban design and development that is ideally suited to the challenge of managing rapid urban growth and change.

Driven by innovation in both research and teaching, the course will help you learn the principles, techniques and skills required to harness new and emerging technologies for design visualisation. We integrate virtual and augmented reality into our learning and teaching in order to fully prepare you for a career in urban design in the 21st century. These technologies will allow you to create immersive visualisations of designs, viewed through virtual reality headsets, to accurately simulate solutions for real life planning issues.

This course does not require you to have a previous design background. We have students from planning, geography and architecture on the course, but we also have engineers, economists and graphic designers. We take on students with a broader range of skills and experience. The course is international in outlook and we welcome students from around the world.

This MA is intended to provide the core skills and knowledge required for a career in urban design. This includes basic training in the main software packages, including CAAD, Photoshop and Illustrator. Working across Architecture and Planning allows students to develop a distinctive approach to urban design and development which is ideally suited to the challenge of managing rapid urban growth and change. We offer an ‘integrated’ approach to urban development that is increasingly required by leading consultants and city authorities around the world. The course also includes a strong real estate dimension in order to ensure that urban design training takes account of the economics of development.

Accreditation

This programme is fully accredited by the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI). Completing an accredited course puts you on track to become a chartered town planner, opening up a wide range of future career opportunities.