Program Overview

City Planning and Design

Overview

The City Planning and Design programme brings together planning and design professionals to engage in project-based learning. Students develop planning research, urban analysis, and design skills.

Course Structure

The programme is designed to allow students to develop real-world project management skills through the completion of live design projects for local authority and community sector clients. Students also acquire urban and data analysis skills to develop strategic regeneration policies and design solutions.

Course Details

The programme covers a wide variety of topics, including:

• Green infrastructure
• The Inclusive City
• Urban Technological Developments
• Low carbon transition
• Critical Heritage Perspectives
• Cities and the e-economy
• Planning the Urban-Rural dialectic
• Demographic challenges
• The future of urban housing
• Health in future cities

People teaching you

• Dr. Urmi Sengupta, Senior Lecturer
• Professor Geraint Ellis, Natural and Built Environment

Teaching Times

Dependent on module choices.

Learning and Teaching

• IT Tutorials: Demonstrator-led IT skills tutorials to ensure students develop GIS and data visualisation skills.
• Project sessions: Tutors offer feedback on student ideas in small groups during the completion of live projects for professional clients.
• Self-directed study: Students engage in private reading, reflection on feedback, and assignment research and preparation work.
• Seminars: Student-led thematic presentations that address major global themes.

Assessment

• A combination of group reports, individual assignments, student presentations, portfolio submissions, and role-play exercises.

Facilities

• The Planning department has a devoted studio space and access to School IT suites.

What our academics say

"In an increasingly urbanising world, cities represent both the greatest social, environmental and economic challenges and opportunities for planners and urban designers alike to create more sustainable environments and just societies." - Dr. Neil Galway, Programme Director for PG Cert in City Planning and Design

Modules

Future Planning Practice

• Overview: Engage with planning practitioners to illustrate career paths for planning graduates within community, environmental, and development sectors.
• Learning Outcomes:
  • Engage in theoretical, practical, and ethical debate at the forefront of how the planning professional can impact societal and environmental change.
  • Demonstrate an understanding of how the planning profession has evolved and adapted to meet changing circumstances.
  • Evaluate the social, economic, and environmental context within which planners and designers must operate.
• Skills:
  • Generic: Oral communication, negotiation skills, problem-solving, use of IT and library services.
  • Professional: Knowledge of the design evaluation process and interdisciplinary working.

Planning for Sustainable Communities

• Overview: Provide a theoretical and practical basis for community plan preparation, involving detailed consideration of the spatial implications of service provision and meeting local aspirations.
• Learning Outcomes:
  • Demonstrate the skills required to complete a public consultation and devise a strategy that mediates between different perspectives.
  • Analyse the physical and socio-economic contexts of a study area.
  • Communicate in a professional manner using oral and graphic visualisation skills.
• Skills:
  • Generic: Bibliographic research and retrieval, written, graphical, and computer-based presentations skills.
  • Professional: Design appreciation, team-working, time-management, and professional presentation skills.
  • Client-based: Consultation, brief-development, and discussion/debating skills.

Approaches to Development

• Overview: Explore the nature of the 'Development Process', including the economic, social, and political context of property development and the roles of stakeholders.
• Learning Outcomes:
  • Understand the broader economic, social, and political context of property development.
  • Demonstrate a clear understanding of the rationale and structure of the real estate development process.
  • Practice the basic techniques of financial analysis as applied to urban real estate.
• Skills:
  • Generic: Written and oral communication, numeracy, and financial modelling, problem-solving, use of IT and library services.
  • Professional: Knowledge of the development process, evaluation of development strategies, decision-making in planning, and stakeholder perspectives.
  • Client-based: Project management, tendering processes, negotiation of added value, and community benefits.

Urban Futures

• Overview: Engage in critical debates in planning, exploring global challenges such as green infrastructure, the inclusive city, urban technological change, and low carbon transition.
• Learning Outcomes:
  • Critically analyse and participate in theoretical, practical, and ethical debates on planning.
  • Demonstrate enhanced communication skills through participation in discussions, presentation, and class feedback sessions.
  • Appreciate how urban design and place-making projects can ameliorate or exacerbate challenges related to specialist planning themes.
• Skills:
  • Generic: Bibliographic research and retrieval, written, graphical, and computer-based presentations skills.
  • Professional: Design appreciation, team-working, time-management, and professional presentation skills.

Spatial Literacy

• Overview: Examine the theoretical, practical, and ethical issues at the forefront of urban planning, understanding and evaluating the social, economic, environmental, and political contexts for city planning.
• Learning Outcomes:
  • Debate the theoretical, practical, and ethical issues at the forefront of urban planning.
  • Understand and evaluate the social, economic, environmental, and political contexts for city planning.
  • Recognise the role of spatial literacy in making sustainable, equitable places.
• Skills:
  • Generic: Utilise basic skills in computer-based mapping and spatial literacy using relevant software.
  • Professional: Team-working, collaboration, oral and written presentational skills, and spatial literacy and visual appreciation.

Comparative Urban Design

• Overview: Engage in a real-world live project to exemplify and complement theoretical content, involving detailed desk-based policy analysis, stakeholder mapping and interviews, urban analysis, and the creation of urban design and policy solutions.
• Learning Outcomes:
  • Understand the nature and significance of design and regeneration in the built environment.
  • Appreciate the complementarity between design and regeneration in the built environment.
  • Debate theoretical, ethical, and practical issues in relation to design and regeneration.
• Skills:
  • Generic: Bibliographic research and retrieval, written, graphical, and computer-based presentations skills.
  • Professional: Design appreciation, team-working, time-management, and professional presentation skills.
  • Client-based: Consultation, brief-development, and discussion/debating skills.

Entrance requirements

• Normally a 2.2 Honours degree or equivalent qualification acceptable to the University in a relevant subject.
• Applicants who do not meet the above academic requirement but have appropriate acceptable experience will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

International Students

• Our country/region pages include information on entry requirements, tuition fees, scholarships, student profiles, upcoming events, and contacts for your country/region.

English Language Requirements

• Evidence of an IELTS score of 6.5, with not less than 5.5 in any component, or an equivalent qualification acceptable to the University is required.

Tuition Fees

• Northern Ireland (NI): £2,434
• Republic of Ireland (ROI): £2,434
• England, Scotland or Wales (GB): £3,083
• EU Other: £7,166
• International: £7,166

Additional course costs

• If selecting EVP7038 – Comparative Urban Design, students are required to undertake a compulsory field trip to a European city, with estimated costs of approximately £500.

Career Prospects

• Our graduates end up in leading positions in central and local government and as well as in planning consultancies in the private sector.
• Examples of employment: Urban Design and Planning practices, Research institutions, GIS companies, Housing organisations, Community Advocacy Groups, Environmental and Community sector NGOs.

Graduate Plus/Future Ready Award for extra-curricular skills

• The Department for the Economy will provide a tuition fee loan of up to £6,500 per NI / EU student for postgraduate study.
• A postgraduate loans system in the UK offers government-backed student loans of up to £11,836 for taught and research Masters courses in all subject areas.