International Planning Studies

Optional courses

Students on the MSc in International Planning Studies Planning are required to take the following 40 credits of planning courses:

• Contemporary Planning Systems examines the spatial planning system, focusing on its evolution, structure and processes. It critically explores the institutional and legal framework within which planning takes place and critically engages contemporary planning practices, debates, theories, controversies, issues and concerns. While emphasising British planning systems, the course brings in a lot of international examples.
• Designing Places provides students with an appreciation of the importance and process of design in creating high quality places and enhancing the public realm and to evaluate the effectiveness of alternative design approaches in achieving this.
• Spatial Planning Strategies seeks to enable and encourage students to generate visionary and imaginative responses to spatial planning challenges, which are realistic and derive from substantial investigation and analysis of relevant data and other evidence.

In addition, students are required to select 20 credits of specialist courses taken from the following list:

• International Urban Challenges is a 20 credits course that examines global urban challenges through in-depth thematical and regional case studies to help students to gain in-depth understanding of contemporary urban issues.
• Asian Cities is a 20 credits course which involves oversea travel.  This intensive fieldtrip, run by the University of Hong Kong, were students visit case study developments over a 2 or 4 weeks period from the end of June and through July. The cities visited as part of the full four weeks version are usually Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul.  Students are expected to pay for their own travel and accommodation costs.