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Urban Design Postgraduate Certificate
| Program start date | Application deadline |
| 2024-09-01 | - |
Program Overview
Course summary
Urban design involves shaping the physical setting for life in cities. This course provides a practical preparation for professionals entering urban design practice. It gives you an opportunity to study urban design at postgraduate level, without the need to commit to the full MA course. It also gives practitioners in the urban environment the necessary basic skills in urban design to enable government to deliver its vision of an ‘urban renaissance’.
The course recognises that busy planners, landscape architects, architects, highway engineers and surveyors might not have the time or resources to commit to a part-time Master's course. Attendance has therefore been tailored to fit the demands of active professionals without compromising the course’s educational objectives. On completion, many students opt to transfer credit and join the MA/Diploma course.
Top reasons to study with us
- Excellent course reputation – Our urban design postgraduate course is one of the longest established in the UK and has an excellent reputation in the industry
- Learn from experts – You’ll be taught by staff with many years' experience in practice, education, training, research, and consultancy in the UK and overseas
- Central London location – Our central London location allows you to interact with a huge variety of practitioners and organisations, as well as drawing on the city's huge range of resources; you’ll be at the heart of the debate over the future of cities
- Live-design projects – The course theory and design modules utilise London and the south east of England as an urban laboratory where projects are based on active development sites or set within current areas of change, typically experiencing development pressures or other development challenges, similar to work taking place in practice
Course climate action statement
In helping to address the climate crisis, the urban design course will focus on cities as centres of climate challenges and hubs for innovative solutions. The course will highlight the potential of urban design to shape sustainable development and resilient cities and communities through thoughtful approaches to urban form, public space, urban landscapes and urban ecologies.
Course structure
You will learn the core skills and techniques of urban design. The following modules are indicative of what you will study on this course. Postgraduate Certificate students take 60 credits in one year.
Core modules
Urban Design and Development Process
This module allows students to undertake structured research in support of the urban design project module with particular reference to development context, governance and the planning regime, and the development industry. Students undertake a range of investigations, a simplified financial feasibility study, and develop knowledge of a range of building and other urban typologies to be used as design criteria as part of the design project.
20 credits
Urban Design Project
This is a design-based module enabling students to combine the learning undertaken in other modules and to evolve strategic concepts previously developed in other modules into detailed design positions. The module is an individual site-based design project, allowing students to explore issues in a specific context and to generate original approaches, deploying urban space and built elements to meet stated aims in a comprehensive manner.
20 credits
Option modules
You'll choose one option module to take.
Information Management Applications for Urban Planning
This is a project-based module where students investigate industry-standard software and datasets easily available for analysis and representation of spatial phenomena. Supported by a series of lectures the module has a focus on student led projects developing a critical understanding of how software can enhance practice rather than developing advanced software skills.
20 credits
Emerging Landscapes and Urban Ecologies
This is a theory and case study-based module that critically examines the role of and definition of nature in urban environments. It looks at the role of nature, ecology and landscape as powerful paradigms in cities in the late 20th / early 21st century. Socioenvironmental sustainability, urban ecology, adaptive reuse and the re-emergence of natural landscape features as part of a city’s active green infrastructure are addressed and discussed through relevant literature. International case studies are explored in the context of a growing awareness of the importance of city ecologies for health and wellbeing, sustainability and the future design of cities.
20 credits
Environmental Policy, Assessment and Climate Change
This module provides background on environmental policy and climate change. It sets out the theoretical framework to start with, and then the international context for sustainable development, energy efficiency and climate change. It explores implications for the built environment in a range of development contexts, includes analysis of key policy concerns and planning and design responses comparatively across different institutional and cultural contexts. It also reviews techniques for assessing the impacts of development and examines the role that effective environmental strategies and policies in planning and related fields can pursue to reach sustainable development.
20 credits
Conservation and Heritage
An introduction to the historic urban landscapes that form an important part of most towns and cities throughout the world. Theory and conservation practice evaluated in a legislative and case law context. Students will learn the techniques of character appraisal and how they can form a platform for further creative intervention and develop an understanding of the specific legislative constraints relating to heritage assets.
20 credits
Communities Towards Sustainability: Public Engagement
Following the growing awareness and recognisance of people's voices in shaping their places, the module addresses key issues around public engagement and themes of sustainability applied to the local scale, by looking at challenges addressed by communities and grassroots, from an interdisciplinary perspective. The participants will gain practical skills through the observation and participation to real-life projects, by being taught and working within an interdisciplinary team, composed of various speakers from different fields and professional horizons, the local authorities and the community groups. They will develop a reflective approach on ways to serve the community and enhance social capital and will additionally benefit from an international exposure through an exchange workshop with a European university. Students will gain theoretical knowledge on key ideas related to sustainability, community, participation, social capital and governance, inequalities issues and cultural diversity attached to place-making processes; and develop analytical skills on key historical and contemporary debates about community engagement, community diversity through London's key challenges for sustainability and by learning on international cases.
20 credits
Housing and Urban Regeneration
Housing and economic development; debates about housing supply; the role of public policy including planning in promoting housing development; the development of affordable housing; concentrations of social deprivation and negative neighbourhood effects; strategies for neighbourhood regeneration; governance and capacity building; tackling worklessness; policy evaluation.
20 credits
Planning for Urban Risk and Resilience
Spatial planning for risk management, including reducing vulnerability and building urban resilience as it relates to the built environment, urban governance and long-term climate change and development needs. Integrates sustainable development and climate change mitigation and adaptation concerns with disaster planning and urban risk management.
20 credits
Sustainable Neighbourhood Development and Management
Participatory planning, housing and land management for urban regeneration and community development in the developed and developing world contexts (using UK and European case studies as a point of reference where appropriate); policies and methods for sustainable neighbourhood planning including informal, low-income housing and settlements in developing world cities.
20 credits
International Spatial Planning Practice
International perspective on spatial planning principles and methods, comparing different paradigms in spatial planning and sustainable urban form for new and existing towns and cities and their regions. Role of spatial planning and land development at the strategic level in mediating between market forces and social need and in the spatial co-ordination of sectoral policies and programmes.
20 credits
Place, Space and Active Transport
This module focuses on traffic and streets, where traffic refers to a range of urban transport modes. It covers movement and place functions in urban contexts, including tensions within and between each. Students analyse approaches to evaluating urban street environments, particularly focused on walking and cycling. This incorporates comparisons of methodological approaches used within different streetscape contexts and within different countries.
20 credits
Land Use Planning and Transport
The module explores changes in land use in relation to changes in city form and function. It focuses on how the changing planning system (including specific funding systems and processes, and the broader planning framework) shapes transport systems and their sustainability. Different views on transport and land use planning are considered, including local authority and developer perspectives. The module incorporates discussion of transport modelling and forecasting, and an introduction to relevant software as it is used within planning and policy-making. The module considers social and environmental trends and constraints as they affect planning for future transport systems.
20 credits
Destination Development: Case Study Perspective
This module focuses on destinations and will evaluate and debate destination development strategies. It will consider alternative destination management structures and assess the role of destination planning in limiting the negative impacts of tourism and ensuring competitiveness. The module will follow a case study approach with students assessing destination responses to different scenarios and challenges. Both UK and overseas destinations will be studied, ranging across resort, urban and rural settings.
20 credits
