UCL Bartlett School of Planning
MSc UDCP | PREPARING FOR URBAN DESIGN PRACTICE
The MSc UDCP is a master’s programme with a unique focus on the interface between urban design and city planning. Students gain a better understanding of this interface and develop the ability to think in critical, creative and analytical ways across the different scales of the city, from strategic to local, and from urban design, planning, real estate to sustainability. In doing so the course relates closely to and builds upon the long-term urban design research specialisations of The Bartlett School of Planning.
The MSc UDCP is primarily aimed at those with an initial training in planning, architecture or other allied disciplines, who wish to complete or expand their professional education whilst specialising in urban design, and exploring the purpose and potential of this subject in greater depth.
The programme integrates three streams of work:
- City Planning, with a focus on spatial planning and strategic plan-making (large-scale master planning);
- Integrative thinking with a focus on place-making (neighbourhood scale master planning and public space design), offering students a deeper knowledge of the forms, practices and theories associated with urban design and exploring a wide range of critical debates in the discipline;
- Delivering Quality, bringing a focus on delivery by understanding the interface between, on the one hand, urban design and real estate, and on the other, urban design and sustainability;
- Planning for Quality, focusing on understanding key urban design concepts, including urban typology, density and layout, as well as indirect process of urban design through the tools of guidance, incentive and control.
The MSc UDCP is fully accredited by both the Royal Town planning institute (RTPI) and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).
MREs IdUD | EXPLORATIONS IN URBAN DESIGN
For students interested in a more flexible research-led degree the MRes Inter-disciplinary Urban Design offers a one year research degree (also available part-time).
This Faculty-wide degree offers an inter-disciplinary space in which students can examine the challenges of urban design from comparative disciplinary perspectives, shaping their own degree to reflect their background, interests and future aspirations. It exposes students to the latest cutting-edge urban design research from the largest concentration of urban researchers in the UK; offers the opportunity for students to conduct a substantial piece of individual research / research-led design; trains students in methodologies appropriate to the conduct of urban scale investigation; and gives access to an extensive range of taught modules from across the Faculty and beyond.
RECENT RESEARCH
Research at The Bartlett School of Planning has made the case for and supported the national (and international) drive for better design in the built environment, helping in the process to mainstream ideas about the importance of urban design in government and local policy and across the development process. Three key areas are covered:
- Urban design fundamentals: research exploring the value and processes of urban design, the nature of urban design as a place-shaping continuum, urban design as an arena for research, the nature of streets and spaces, and the temporal dimension of urban design.
- Public space: research that established the fundamental precepts of effective public space management and which provides the first systematic challenge to increasingly mainstream and polemical critiques of contemporary public space.
- Design governance: research establishing a robust empirical basis for a range of design governance tools including design policies, planning indicators and design coding. And new research exploring the history and impact of CABE and the future governance of design.