The Master of Environment and Planning Programme is an especially selected combination of courses from the Environmental Management and Town and Regional Planning Masters Programmes. The Environment and Planning Programme responds to the growing emphasis on environmental concerns within physical planning and land development processes, and to the need to ensure that planning and environmental assessment are properly integrated. The aim is to produce planners who have skills in environmental management and a sensitivity to environmental concerns.
Course outline
The programme is designed to ensure that students have a good conceptual understanding of core areas, and to develop key competencies necessary to planning. The focus in the course is on physical planning, and on considering questions of environmental, social and economic sustainability in relation to physical planning at various scales. Planners with this orientation should thus have an understanding of planning and its history, and the current orientation towards planning for sustainable development, and its implications for practice. They should be able to develop contextually appropriate plans at various scales, to formulate planning policies and generate and manage planning projects, with a strong orientation towards questions of sustainability. The course also develops within students the capacity to think critically about planning and sustainability.
The first year programme aims to provide a broad overview of planning and sustainability development. It also covers a range of techniques in planning, and planning practice at a variety of scales. The first semester of is focused on the local scale, and to a large extent on physical planning and design. The second semester focuses on the regional and metropolitan scale of planning, and on integrated development planning.
Courses: First semester
- Environmental Planning and City Design (EPCD) (comprises: Approaches to City Form and Design, Environmental Planning)
- Sustainable Development (Geography)
- Techniques in Planning (TP) (students will only be expected to attend the Design components)
- Project Work: Local (PWL)
Courses: Second Semester
- Urban Studies (Geography)
- Planning Theory and Public Policy(PTPP)
- Integrated Development Planning(IDP)
The second year of study is divided between work towards a dissertation (64 credits), and study in more specific areas (72credits). Dissertations are done in the Planning Programme. The Dissertation Proposal course is in the first quarter, first semester, and the Dissertation is written after that. In addition, students study Planning Law and Professional Practice as compulsory courses.
Compulsory courses
- Professional Practice (Planning: 8 credits, 1st quarter)
- Planning Law (Planning: 8 credits)
- Geographic Information Systems (Geography: 16 credits, 1st semester)a
- Environmental Impact Assessment (Geography: 16 credits, 1st semester)
- Research Methods (Geography: 16 credit, 1st semester)
- Dissertation Proposal (Planning: 16 credits, 1st quarter)
- Dissertation (Planning: 48 credits)
Students must choose an optional course appropriate to Environment and Planning, with the approval of the Programme Director
