Master of Urban Planning and Design at Monash University

Expanded methods for the planning professional

The Master of Urban Planning and Design integrates policy and design approaches as central methods for addressing the challenges facing planners in the twenty-first-century city. This approach provides future planners with the ability to actively engage with a range of stakeholders in flexible ways and improve planning processes.

Real-world projects in research settings

The course is interdisciplinary and collaborative with a focus on project studios that unpack the impacts of urban growth and transformation as we move through this century. Projects are themed around central planning issues including the Compact City, the Ecological City, planning metropolitan growth areas, and the Inclusive City.

Each semester, you will explore and develop solutions to key planning and design challenges in real-world settings. Projects work across a range of spatial settings, allowing a broad exploration of issues, and development of skills and knowledge required by planning professionals and appropriate to graduate study. You will learn to employ conceptual tools, analytical methods and visualisation techniques that provide a broad understanding of and the ability to engage with the urban realm.

Upon completion, graduates can engage critically in the discourse around the planning, design and development of the city, integrating practical and specialised knowledge and skills that can be applied in traditional and emerging planning roles.

Multi-disciplinary participants

Students from a range of disciplines and backgrounds work together with Australian and internationally experienced academics and practitioners committed to multi-disciplinary research, as well as practical work, that can develop new modes of professional intervention.

The course is open to applicants from diverse backgrounds including architecture, landscape architecture, engineering, economics and geography.

Graduates may seek employment in government departments and agencies and in planning practices in Australia and around the world.