Graduate Diploma in Urban and Regional Planning

The Graduate Diploma in Urban and Regional Planning offers a thorough grounding in urban and regional planning both to graduates wishing to enter the profession and to practising professionals wishing to upgrade their knowledge.

Course Aims

The Graduate Diploma of Urban and Regional Planning enables graduates to contribute towards making the world more liveable and sustainable through developing understanding and skills in all major and core areas relating to place-making and land use planning.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to: demonstrate an advanced, systematic and coherent body of knowledge in urban and regional planning, including deep understanding of the discipline's underlying principles and concepts; demonstrate highly developed cognitive, critical and technical skills to analyse and evaluate complex land-use and built-environment problems in a range of social, economic and environmental contexts; demonstrate knowledge and skills to exercise the high level judgement and responsibility required of a highly skilled professional planner in the governance of diverse urban and regional contexts; and demonstrate initiative in planning and evaluating approaches to complex planning problems, capacity to work in leadership roles, and ability to communicate complex and theoretical information to a variety of audiences.

Graduate Attributes

Knowledge of a Discipline Graduates will possess advanced theoretical and practical knowledge about land use planning and its place in contemporary society locally and internationally. Graduates will understand how planning influences society and space in a variety of urban and regional contexts. This knowledge will be delivered through various teaching platforms, in the classroom and online, via a variety of materials ranging from critical readings to maps, plans and statistics. The development of knowledge in the discipline will be monitored through assignments within each unit of the course. Communication Skills Graduates will possess advanced skills to communicate in forms essential to the discipline. This will include the ability to communicate through oral communication, report writing, statistics, maps, plans and other graphical forms. It will also include skills to constructively engage with various participants in urban and regional planning. These skills will be taught and practised in lectures, tutorials and online activities and assessment tasks throughout the course. Problem Solving Graduates will possess advanced skills to identify problems and develop solutions in urban and regional planning. This will include capacity to interpret urban and regional environments, their composition and social impacts, and to contribute to the improvement of those environments through professional decision-making techniques. The course will hone these skills in general methods of urban and regional planning, and in specialist areas like transport planning, and urban design. Information Literacy Graduates will have the ability to identify information requirements in a variety of planning situations, and advanced skills in sourcing, using and representing that information for planning practice. This will include assembling information from primary and secondary sources, and evaluating the significance of that information for a given context. These skills will be taught throughout the course, and exercised through a variety of guided assignment tasks. Ethical Conduct and Social Responsibility Graduates will have expert awareness of the professional and ethical responsibilities of the planning profession. Graduates will have advanced skills to engage appropriately with various participants in the planning discipline, and to be appropriately responsive to various social and cultural influences in planning interactions. Lifelong Learning Skills and knowledge developed during the course will foster intellectual curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking in the graduate. Advanced cognition of planning concepts and practices developed through the course will provide a foundation for lifelong intellectual engagement with the discipline. Independence and Collaboration The various learning activities undertaken during the course will provide the graduate skills to work independently and collaboratively in planning situations. Graduates will have a confidence in their grasp of planning knowledge, and skills to inclusively negotiate planning outcomes with a variety of stakeholders. These skills will be developed through on-campus and online interactive activities, ranging from self-directed learning to collaborative projects.