Urban Design Postgraduate Certificate

Program Overview

The Urban Design Postgraduate Certificate is a one-year part-time program designed for busy professionals seeking practical urban design skills. It offers core modules in urban design and development and an urban design project, along with optional modules to choose from. The program prepares graduates for management roles where they collaborate with urban design teams to shape sustainable and resilient cities and communities.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

The Urban Design Postgraduate Certificate is a one-year part-time program designed for professionals seeking a practical introduction to urban design. It offers a postgraduate-level study opportunity without the commitment of a full MA course. The program aims to equip professionals in the urban environment with the necessary skills to contribute to the government's vision of an "urban renaissance." It caters to busy professionals like planners, landscape architects, architects, engineers, and surveyors who may not have the time for a full Master's program. The program's curriculum is tailored to meet the demands of active professionals while maintaining its educational objectives. Many students choose to transfer their credits and join the MA/Diploma course after completing the certificate.

Outline:

The program consists of 60 credits completed over one year. It includes core modules and optional modules.

Core Modules:

• Urban Design and Development Process (20 credits): This module focuses on structured research supporting the urban design project module.
Students investigate development context, governance, planning regimes, the development industry, and various building and urban typologies. They also conduct a simplified financial feasibility study.
• Urban Design Project (20 credits): This design-based module integrates learning from other modules and develops strategic concepts into detailed design positions.
Students undertake an individual site-based design project, exploring issues in a specific context and generating original approaches to urban space and built elements.

Optional Modules:

Students choose one option module from the following: Students develop critical understanding of how software enhances practice.

• Emerging Landscapes and Urban Ecologies (20 credits): This theory and case study-based module examines the role of nature in urban environments.
It explores concepts like socioenvironmental sustainability, urban ecology, adaptive reuse, and green infrastructure.
• Environmental Policy, Assessment and Climate Change (20 credits): This module provides background on environmental policy and climate change, exploring implications for the built environment and examining planning and design responses to sustainable development.
• Conservation and Heritage (20 credits): This module introduces historic urban landscapes and their conservation practices.
Students learn character appraisal techniques and understand legislative constraints related to heritage assets.
• Communities Towards Sustainability: Public Engagement (20 credits): This module addresses public engagement and sustainability themes at the local scale.
Students gain practical skills through real-life projects and develop a reflective approach to community service and social capital enhancement.
• Housing and Urban Regeneration (20 credits): This module explores housing supply, public policy, affordable housing, neighborhood regeneration, and strategies for tackling worklessness.
• Planning for Urban Risk and Resilience (20 credits): This module focuses on spatial planning for risk management, integrating sustainable development and climate change concerns with disaster planning and urban risk management.
• 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.
• Land Use Planning and Transport (20 credits): This module explores changes in land use in relation to city form and function, focusing on how the planning system shapes transport systems and their sustainability.
• Destination Development: Case Study Perspective (20 credits): This module evaluates and debates destination development strategies, considering alternative management structures and assessing the role of destination planning in mitigating negative impacts of tourism.

Assessment:

The program utilizes a variety of assessment methods, including:

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

Teaching:

Teaching methods include:

• Lectures
• Seminars
• Workshops
• Problem-based learning
• Blended learning
• Practical application
The program is taught by staff with extensive experience in practice, education, training, research, and consultancy in the UK and overseas.

Careers:

Graduates of this program are typically built environment professionals who work with or oversee urban designers in management positions. While they may not directly undertake urban design, they work with urban design teams.

Other:

The program benefits from links with organizations like:

• Design Council (formerly CABE)
• New London Architecture (NLA)
• The Design Review Panel
• The Royal Town Planning Institute
• The Urban Design Group
The program emphasizes the importance of urban design in addressing climate challenges and shaping sustainable development and resilient cities and communities. It highlights the potential of urban design to influence urban form, public space, urban landscapes, and urban ecologies.

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. 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.