The MSc Town Planning course provides students with the academic and professional core knowledge, understanding, skills and experience to practice professionally as town planners. The MSc Town Planning (Chartered Apprenticeship) route combines students’ completion of the course with workplace learning supported by their employers. The course is fully accredited by both the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), and is the only dually accredited course on the south coast.

The course promotes critical thinking, community engagement, partnership building and leadership, building on the students’ educational and practice background, and drawing on the School’s expertise in coastal regeneration, climate change and sustainable economic development. Our teaching mixes theory and practice so that students learn how to bring about the best social, economic and environmental outcomes through the mediation of urban development. The location of the university by the sea, with the South Downs National Park on our doorstep, brings exceptional local learning opportunities for planning students.

Students’ individual research and analytical capabilities are developed through coursework and a research project, the Masters Dissertation. Students are also provided with the opportunity to critically reflect on their planning practice through the completion of a Learning Log, and also benefit from a professional mentoring system and placement opportunities.

The MSc Town Planning and MSc Town Planning (Chartered Apprenticeship) course team are pleased to present essays submitted as the students’ first assignment for the course, on the mandatory Planning Theory and Practice module. The module teaching and assessment embeds learning of the relevance of planning theory to changes in planning policy and practice, and encourages students to be reflective practitioners.

The essay asks students to explore the transition of the town planner from ‘technical’ adviser to ‘political’ planning from the post war period through to the 1960s/70s, referring to global debates about advocacy planning and the advent of public participation as we know it.

Course Leader

Ms Georgia Wrighton

The MSc Town Planning and MSc Town Planning (Chartered Apprenticeship) course team are pleased to present essays submitted as the students’ first assignment for the course, on the mandatory Planning Theory and Practice module. The module teaching and assessment embeds learning of the relevance of planning theory to changes in planning policy and practice, and encourages students to be reflective practitioners.

The essay asks students to explore the transition of the town planner from ‘technical’ adviser to ‘political’ planning from the post war period through to the 1960s/70s, referring to global debates about advocacy planning and the advent of public participation as we know it.

The PDFs below are student group submissions for this assignment