Urban Design MA

Program Overview

The University of Westminster's Urban Design MA program equips students with the knowledge and skills to succeed in urban design. The program emphasizes a multidisciplinary approach, combining academic study with live design projects. Taught by experienced professionals, the program boasts an excellent reputation and provides graduates with excellent employment prospects in urban design, architecture, planning, and related fields.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

The Urban Design MA program at the University of Westminster is a one-year, full-time program designed to equip students with the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in the rapidly expanding field of urban design. The program emphasizes a multidisciplinary approach, combining structured academic study with live design projects. This allows students to develop practical skills, a theoretical understanding, and an informed approach to sustainable urban development. The program is one of the longest established in the UK and enjoys an excellent reputation, with graduates highly respected in the profession. Students come from a variety of backgrounds, including architecture, landscape architecture, and planning, and represent a diverse range of nationalities.

Outline:

The Urban Design MA program is structured around a core set of modules and a selection of optional modules. Full-time postgraduate students study 180 credits per year.

Core Modules:

• The Dynamic City: Urban Design and Planning in Context (20 credits): This module focuses on the relationship between urban design theory, practice, and local context.
Students investigate the city as networks and adjacencies, exploring the dynamics of movement, activity, information, ecology, and social interactions that shape urban design interventions.
• Urban Form and Growth (20 credits): This module examines the physical and spatial form of cities at the urban design scale, exploring the basic fabric of urban form, including buildings, streets, and spaces.
Students learn key theoretical approaches to urban morphology, tissue studies, typo-morphological investigations, spatial development patterns, historic development, graphic methods, spatial analysis, and various forms and manifestations of the physical built environment of cities.
• Urban Design and Development Process (20 credits): This module allows students to undertake structured research in support of the urban design project module, focusing on development context, governance, the planning regime, and the development industry.
Students conduct investigations, develop a simplified financial feasibility study, and gain knowledge of various building and urban typologies to be used as design criteria in the design project.
• Urban Design Project (20 credits): This design-based module enables students to combine learning from other modules and evolve strategic concepts into detailed design positions.
• Place and Experience in Design of Urban Spaces (20 credits): This project-based module examines the form, use, and experience of public space, exploring notions of perception, identity, diversity, place, placemaking, and place shaping.
Projects are used to critically assess the character of urban spaces and propose responsive design interventions.
• Urban Design Field Trip (no credits): This residential field trip, typically undertaken in a European city over 5 or 6 days, provides an opportunity to analyze urban form, its evolution, the qualities of public spaces, and how they are used.
Observations are recorded in a notebook.
• Sustainable Cities and Neighbourhoods (20 credits): This module introduces the concepts and ideas of sustainability in urban development, exploring key debates on planning sustainable cities and neighborhoods.
It examines contemporary issues surrounding the theory and practice of sustainable development and includes interdisciplinary and disciplinary discussions on the implementation of sustainable development in planning and design.
• Dissertation / Major Project (40 credits): This module offers the opportunity to research in-depth topics or issues related to urban design based on primary or desk-based research.
Students can choose to write a dissertation of 12-15,000 words or undertake a major design project that explores a particular issue, informed by research, and includes a written report of 5-6,000 words.

Option Modules:

Students choose one option module from the following:

• Emerging Landscapes and Urban Ecologies (20 credits): This theory and case study-based module critically examines the role of nature in urban environments, exploring the role of nature, ecology, and landscape as paradigms in cities.
• Environmental Policy, Assessment and Climate Change (20 credits): This module provides background on environmental policy and climate change, exploring implications for the built environment in various development contexts.
• Conservation and Heritage (20 credits): This module introduces the historic urban landscapes that form an important part of most towns and cities, evaluating theory and conservation practice in a legislative and case law context.
• Communities Towards Sustainability: Public Engagement (20 credits): This module addresses key issues around public engagement and themes of sustainability applied to the local scale, examining challenges addressed by communities and grassroots from an interdisciplinary perspective.
• Housing and Urban Regeneration (20 credits): This module explores housing and economic development, debates about housing supply, the role of public policy in promoting housing development, and strategies for neighborhood regeneration.
• Planning for Urban Risk and Resilience (20 credits): This module focuses on spatial planning for risk management, including reducing vulnerability and building urban resilience in relation to the built environment, urban governance, and long-term climate change.
• Sustainable Neighbourhood Development and Management (20 credits): This module examines participatory planning, housing, and land management for urban regeneration and community development in developed and developing world contexts.
• International Spatial Planning Practice (20 credits): This module provides an international perspective on spatial planning principles and methods, comparing different paradigms in spatial planning and sustainable urban form.
• Streets, Places and Active Transport (20 credits): This module focuses on traffic and streets, covering movement and place functions in urban contexts.
• Land Use Planning and Transport (20 credits): This module explores changes in land use in relation to changes in city form and function, focusing on how the changing planning system shapes transport systems and their sustainability.
• Destination Development: Case Study Perspective (20 credits): This module focuses on destinations, evaluating and debating destination development strategies.
• Extended Essay Option for Planning, Transport and Urban Design (20 credits): This module offers the opportunity to explore a particular area of contemporary theory or practice in depth through desk-based research.

Assessment:

The Urban Design MA program utilizes a variety of assessment methods, including:

• Practical: Presentations, podcasts, blogs
• Coursework: Essays, in-class tests, portfolios, dissertation

Teaching:

The program employs a range of teaching methods, including:

• Lectures: Provide foundational knowledge and theoretical frameworks.
• Seminars: Facilitate in-depth discussions and critical analysis of topics.
• Workshops: Offer hands-on experience and practical application of concepts.
• Problem-based and blended learning: Encourage active student engagement and integration of different learning approaches.
• Practical application: Emphasize real-world application of knowledge and skills through live design projects.
The program is taught by staff with extensive experience in practice, education, training, research, and consultancy in the UK and overseas.

Careers:

Graduates of the Urban Design MA program typically find employment as urban designers in private consultancy or local authorities. Many also pursue careers in architecture, planning, or landscape architecture. The program's strong vocational focus and excellent reputation within the industry contribute to excellent employment prospects for full-time students. Part-time students, often already employed, typically experience promotion and career enhancement soon after completion. While most graduates pursue careers in design practice, some continue their studies, and the program provides a solid foundation for those pursuing research degrees.

Other:

The program benefits from links with a number of organizations, including:

• Design Council (formerly CABE)
• New London Architecture (NLA)
• The Design Review Panel
• The Royal Town Planning Institute
• The Urban Design Group
The program also highlights 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.

• UK tuition fee: £9,500 (Price per academic year)
• International tuition fee: £15,000 (Price per academic year)
• When you have enrolled with us, your annual tuition fees will remain the same throughout your studies with us.
We do not increase your tuition fees each year. This opportunity is available if you have a personal tuition fee liability of £2,000 or more and if you are self-funded or funded by the Student Loans Company.