Course description

MSc Planning will provide you with the range of skills necessary for a career in urban or environmental planning.

The course is aimed at graduates who want a career in planning and development, either in the public or private sector.

It will provide you with the core knowledge, competencies and skills necessary to become a chartered planning and development professional and a member of both the RTPI and the RICS.

You will gain an understanding of the full range of professional skills relevant for practice, as well as specialist competencies.

Aims

You will:

tailor the course to your professional interests by choosing from numerous optional units;

develop specialist knowledge for a career in planning;

gain an international perspective on overseas fieldwork.

Special features

Benefit from small-group teaching, close staff-student relationships, and guided one-to-one supervision.

Develop practical skills in project studios with drawing facilities, model-making workshops, and specialist design and spatial analysis software.

Enjoy fieldwork opportunities in the UK and abroad, exploring real-life issues on one-day trips, site visits, and overseas residential visits to locations including Manchester, London, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, Toronto, Amsterdam, Belfast and Dublin.

Have the flexibility to mix discipline units or specialise, and choose from a wide range of optional course units.

Study in Manchester, a city where planning has been taught for more than 50 years, and urban development and environmental impacts are on your doorstep.

Teaching and learning

An overseas field visit is an optional part of the course, if students choose to undertake the relevant optional course unit (International Planning (Field Visit)). Recent locations have included Barcelona, Amsterdam, Belfast, Dublin and Toronto.

Fieldwork may be scheduled at any point during the course, and this may include time during University vacations. Successful applicants are expected to be available to attend.

Countries to be visited may change their immigration and visa regulations at short notice. The School cannot guarantee that where visas are required for the field course, they will be granted. The School will ensure that, in the unlikely event that a visa is refused, affected students are not academically disadvantaged.

The course also includes a course unit that introduces students to the excitement of working within a professional, 'real world' context on a 'live' consultancy project. 

Working with industrial partners, students will be asked to complete a piece of work on an area of planning, urban regeneration, or environmental management - depending on their chosen specialism - to a standard that is expected and demanded in the planning, environmental management or development professions. This core course unit is highly regarded by employers and students alike.

Part-time students complete the full-time programme over 27 months. There are no evening or weekend course units available on the part-time programme, therefore if you are considering taking a programme on a part-time basis, you should discuss the requirements with the Programme Director and seek approval from your employer to have the relevant time off.  Timetabling information is normally available from late August from the Programme Administrator and you will have the opportunity to discuss course unit choices during induction week with the Programme Director.

Coursework and assessment

Taught elements of this course are assessed on a continuous basis by a variety of methods, including essays, seminar papers and project reports.