Master of Urban and Regional Planning

The Master of 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 Master 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, including through original research.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to: demonstrate a systematic and coherent body of knowledge that incorporates state of the art understanding of urban and regional planning, along with knowledge of research principles and methods applicable to the field; demonstrate highly developed cognitive, critical and theoretical skills to analyse and creatively evaluate and generate ideas relating to 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; demonstrate initiative and autonomy in evaluating and implementing approaches to complex planning problems and research, capacity to work in leadership roles, and ability to communicate complex and theoretical information to a variety of audiences; and plan and undertake a substantial research-based project, to answer a research question competently and ethically using the appropriate methodology and analysis, and communicating the problem, approach, results and conclusions effectively.

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. Graduates will also have enhanced knowledge in a specialist area of planning through targeted academic research. 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. Graduates will also have advanced skills in academic writing through the communication of research. 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. Graduates will also have specialist skills to apply advanced research methods to identified problems in urban and regional planning contexts. Information Literacy Graduates will have the advanced 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 practiced skills to assemble information from primary and secondary sources, and specialist abilities to evaluate the significance of that information for a given context. Specialist research skills will be taught during the course, and exercised through a supervised research project. Ethical Conduct and Social Responsibility Graduates will have expert awareness of the professional and ethical responsiblities 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. Research work during the course will build advanced cognition of planning concepts and practices developed, providing an excellent foundation for lifelong intellectual engagement with the discipline. Independence and Collaboration Learning and research activities undertaken during the course will provide the graduate with high level skills to work independently on complex planning problems. Graduates will possess specialist skills to undertake independent academic research and will have advanced confidence in their grasp of planning knowledge, methods and practices. Graduates will also learn skills relating to stakeholder engagement and collaboration. These skills will be developed through on-campus and online interactive activities, and supervised research.