Specialising in your urban planning master's degree

This specialism consists of two modules addressing the question 'what constitutes a successful infrastructure project, programme or plan?'. 

• Infrastructures as Agents of Change (Term 1) defines the characteristics of infrastructure projects, programmes and plans of various kinds and examines their roles as agents of change. It encompasses an understanding of past perspectives of the role of such investments and investigates 21st Century perspectives in a context of global interdependencies of economic growth and environmental impacts as sustainability concerns loom large as key challenges.
• Critical Issues in Infrastructure Funding, Financing & Investment focuses on issues that cross all infrastructure sectors in the developed and developing world. It examines challenges seen to be critical to sustainable investments. While not exhaustive, the module examines the: role of PPPs, impacts of corruption, ‘Section 106 & Community Infrastructure Levy, Property value uplift and Tax Incremental Financing and impact of fiscal devolution.

The two modules analyse planning processes - both discourses and practices - used to conceptualise and regulate the rate and direction of physical change in historic urban environments.

• Planning Discourses for Historic Cities (Term 1) introduces the rationale for management of change in our historic cities and different discourses shaping planning for urban transformation (e.g. development, growth, rehabilitation, regeneration) in heritage settings. The approach is multi-scalar and investigates different layers of competence at international, national, and local level. We explore how cultural identity, significance and values shape and are shaped within different urban conservation paradigms; how heritage, culture and cultural assets are perceived by different stakeholders and their place within the planning system; how social and economic challenges and opportunities boost or hinder urban conservation and heritage-led regeneration processes, as well as the role of communities in planning for the historic (tourist) city.
• Planning Practices in Historic Cities (Term 2) is a project based module, designed to increase your knowledge about methods, mechanisms and practices for area-based conservation through the critical evaluation of an existing, or proposed, conservation area. A variety of heritage methodologies are used to examine designated (in law) and non-designated (in policy) historic areas and places. Students are encouraged to apply many of the concepts delivered in BPLN0067 to such area-based conservation, for example in the conservation of cultural heritage, the curation of tangible and intangible assets and the management and future enhancement of such places. In doing so we investigate both UK and international systems for conservation planning aimed at regulating the change and continuity of the historic environment mainly through regulatory frameworks.

This specialism examines the context for and process of residential development in the UK

• Planning for Housing: Process begins by looking at the drivers of residential development including the demographics of growth. It considers who provides housing and at the evolution of the UK policy context and its current objectives. The component then looks at the residential development process from strategic and development planning, land acquisition to the occupation of homes under different tenure arrangements. The lecture programme is divided into three parts: concerned firstly with broad perspectives on housing growth, policy and planning; secondly, with housing providers, processes and delivery; and thirdly, with critical debates and outcomes today.
• Planning for Housing: Project is the project-based component, challenging students to apply and extend their knowledge of development drivers, actors and practices to real-life housing development opportunities in London. Via small group organisation, students will co-ordinate the completion of a comprehensive feasibility study and housing development brief for a specific site. Groups will be allocated strategic mandates reflecting the current policy context and objectives explored in BPLN0044 and will then plan, design and initiate the implementation of a development scheme from a selected development actor perspective, reflecting tenure, design, and organisational intentions. Schemes will be collectively proposed and managed and then presented by each team to an audience of peers, staff and relevant experts in the field.

This specialism looks at the inter-related themes of sustainability and inclusion.

• Governance for Sustainability and Inclusion explores a variety of conceptual issues surrounding the governing process for achieving urban sustainability are examined alongside the challenges involved in defining and achieving inclusion in the planning process.
• Students can pick from two modules in Term 2. If they wish to focus more on environmental sustainability and, in particular, the climate emergence, they can take Sustainability, Resilience and Climate Change. If they wish to delve further into the problematics of inclusionary planning, they can take Participatory Urban Planning Project. Both of the Term 2 modules take the form of a project, pursued through teamwork and in collaboration with external stakeholders.

This specialism considers design across a range of different scales of operation, from those dealing with settlement form, to those dealing with land use mix, to those concerned with detailed design and individual site layout and comprises Urban Design: Layout, Density and Typology (term 1) and Urban Design: Guidance, Incentive and Control (term 2). To that extent planning is undoubtedly a design discipline and planners need to be aware of, and be concerned with, the design consequences of their decisions on the ground.

This pair of modules is concerned with sustainable development in relation to the theory of urban development and spatial planning practice in cities associated with sustainable development goals. The two modules – Sustainable Urban Development: Key Themes (Term 1) and Sustainable Development Goals and Spatial Planning (Term 2) - provide insights into the critical sustainability agendas through study of sustainable development research, case studies, and explorations of implementation.

This specialism is concerned with innovation, urban and regional economic development and regeneration and comprises two modules – Urban Problems and Problematics (Term 1) and Developing Regeneration Projects II (Term 2). The issues are analysed in the context of development economics, the new space economy, the agglomeration of innovative high-technology industries, the concepts of the innovative and creative milieu and emerging forms of urban governance. These analyses are brought to bear on project work, which allows for the examination of the relationship between those broad trends and specific local contexts and processes.

Run by UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), these modules give you an introduction to the theory and science of cities, and technological perspectives on ‘smart cities’. 

• Smart Systems Theory in Term 1 deals with more general perspectives on cities developed by urban researchers, systems theorists, complexity theorists, urban planners, geographers and transport engineers will be considered, such as spatial interactions and transport models, urban economic theories, scaling laws and the central place theory for systems of cities, etc.
• Smart Cities: Context, Policy and Government in Term 2 then looks more specifically at the development of smart cities through a history of computing, networks and communications, of applications of smart technologies, ranging from science parks and technopoles to transport based on ICT. The course will cover a wide range of approaches, from concepts of The Universal Machine, to Wired Cities and sensing techniques, spatio-temporal real time data applications, smart energy, virtual reality and social media in the smart city, to name a few. Overall, students will develop a critical approach to more technological and quantitative understandings of the development and management of cities.