Integrative City Planning Lab URBAN5156

  • Academic Session: 2025-26
  • School: School of Social and Political Sciences
  • Credits: 10
  • Level: Level 5 (SCQF level 11)
  • Typically Offered: Semester 1
  • Available to Visiting Students: Yes
  • Collaborative Online International Learning: No
  • Curriculum For Life: No

Short Description

Integrative City Planning Lab introduces the six pathway specialisms offered on MSc City Planning - Housing, International, Place and Design, Energy and Environment, Transport, and Digital Cities - and considers the practical interconnections between them in the real world. The course is structured around 6 'masterclass' lectures that critically engage with the guiding theories, concepts and policy fundamentals of each specialism, alongside applied, cross-cutting workshop labs that consider a 'live' city planning challenge from the perspectives of the six pathways.

Timetable

18 hours of timetabled on-campus teaching in Semester 1 delivered in 3 hourly blocks (1hr lecture + 2hr workshop), once per week, over 6 consecutive weeks.

Requirements of Entry

Mandatory Entry Requirements:

None

 

Recommended Entry Requirements:

None

Excluded Courses

None

Co-requisites

None

Assessment

A Group Poster Presentation (60% - 1 A1 poster with a mixture of text and illustration) exploring current issues and debates in planning theory and practice and a Group Plan-making Project Output (40% - 1 short video/multi-media presentation of approximately 5 minutes) detailing a planning solution to a real work planning problem.

Course Aims

The course aims to introduce students to the guiding theories and concepts of the six specialist pathways offered on the MSc City Planning programme. It challenges students to critically engage with their chosen planning specialism from a range of practice-orientated perspectives, and via lab-based simulations demonstrating how planning decisions in the real world are shaped by myriad social, economic, environmental and political considerations.

Intended Learning Outcomes of Course

By the end of this course students will be able to:

 

■ Describe how the underlying principles of city planning intersect with the sub-domains of housing, international planning, place and design, energy and environment, transport, and digital cities.

■ Critically assess how the theories, concepts and practices of their chosen specialist pathway inform city planning.

■ Evaluate how city planning outcomes are shaped in multiple ways by social, economic, environmental and political considerations by formulating an integrative city planning solution to a real-world planning problem.

Minimum Requirement for Award of Credits

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.

 

Minimum requirement for award of credit for students on MSc City Planning is D3 or above.

 

University standard regulations apply to students on other qualifications.