Your Postgraduate Urban and Regional Planning Offer Holder Hub

Congratulations on your offer to study Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Birmingham! This is your dedicated subject hub where you will find important information about your course before you start!

Why study Urban and Regional Studies at Birmingham?

Join our community – Become part of an academic community, learning from both academics and specialist practitioners. From the outset you will be encouraged to become an independent and self-motivated learner, and challenged to think for yourself.
Real world study - Our programme focuses on applied, real world study, ensuring you gain the essential transferable skills valued by all employers. To create this “real world” feel, there are a number of planning practitioners who directly input into our programme. Get involved in the practical aspect of the diversity of Birmingham with developers and planning issues around the city and wider West Midlands, combining to create our “learning laboratory”.
Research-led teaching – Our extensive research and consultancy work ensures that our teaching is relevant, up-to-date and research-led, while losing none of its intellectual rigour.
Student support - You will benefit from a favourable staff–student ratio and full tutorial support as well as access to a comprehensive support system throughout your time at Birmingham that will assist and encourage you, including personal tutors and welfare tutors who can help with both academic and welfare issues.

MSc Urban and Regional Planning

Harriet Nind, studying on the MSc Urban and Regional Planning masters degree course in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, talks about her experiences on the course.

Transcript

Introduction:

Hello, I'm Harriet and I study Urban and Regional Planning. I chose Birmingham because it’s got a really good reputation as a university, and also the city itself is really diverse and really interesting and has lots of good planning issues.

What is your course about?

My course is special because it really involved the practical aspect of the diversity of Birmingham, like we get really involved with all the different developers and all the different planning aspects of the city. So we’re not just learning in the classroom, we’re actually getting involved with things that are going on in the city, which are obviously very relevant. It’s delivered on Mondays and Tuesdays from ten till five, and that’s all kind of lectures.

What is the course like and activity work:

I do have a job lined up, and that was in lieu of getting work experience before I came back to University. So hopefully I’ll be going back there when I'm done with this course, and that’s a planning consultancy in Brighton which is kind of where I'm based now.

Personal experience:

So far I've really enjoyed kind of how personal the experience is, in that it’s a really small class sizes, everyone gets to know each other, all the tutors get to know you, and it’s just a really nice kind of informal communal environment.

Advice:

I’d say if you want to go into an postgraduate make sure you do lots of research before. I was slightly apprehensive about coming back to Uni because I didn’t really do a traditional course, and then I’d been working for a couple of years. And so I was feeling a bit strange about returning back and, you know, do I know how to do it, like will I have the support. So like really have a good look at different uni's available. I mean I chose here because there was lots of support available and the class sizes are pretty small so I knew if I wanted help I can go ask and feel like I'm more of a name and not just a number really.

Birmingham: A Top Choice for Graduate Employability

We’re proud to be the UK university most targeted by the country’s leading graduate employers (The Graduate Market in 2024 High Fliers report). We are creating a new generation of innovative professionals ready to be part of advancing modern cutting-edge industries.

Accredited degree: Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI)

Fully accredited by the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI), this programme is designed to develop you into a reflective practitioner in the planning profession and related disciplines in the built environment. It is ideal for those who wish to gain a professional qualification that will enable them to pursue and build a career in spatial planning and related areas of regeneration, economic development, housing and transport.