MPlan Planning

This course has normally included an overseas field trip in year 4, which is an optional part of the course. Please note there is a student contribution towards the cost of the trip depending on the location.

We are committed to attracting and supporting the very best students from all backgrounds to study this course.  

You could be eligible for cash bursaries of up to £2,500 to support your studies. 

Find out about our funding opportunities

Recent catastrophic weather events, from wildfires, to hurricanes to extreme flooding, have highlighted the potential risks posed by the twinned climate change and biodiversity crises. This unit introduces the global challenges we face in the age of the Anthropocene, and provides a framework for analysing key issues and developing practical approaches linked to these agendas.

Concern over issues such as flooding, water supply, heat waves, poor air quality and food security are driving innovations in the design of buildings and landscapes, transport, food systems and manufacturing processes.

Transformational change towards sustainability will require profound imaginative leaps by people in all aspects of life. It will take imagination to design new ways to meet our needs without harming the environment. How do we link global sustainability issues to local places in a way that inspires such imaginative leaps, and actually promotes action? This will require new approaches in all of the built environment professions and creative thinking across sectors and professions.

Design is an iterative process tending towards new solutions. Responding to the challenge of sustainability has led to new ways of thinking about design, under the broad umbrella of ecological design. This implies learning from natural systems, and applying these lessons to the design of human systems and settlements. There is a particular focus in the unit on mitigating and adapting to climate change, central to achieving a secure and prosperous future across the world.

The unit aims to:

provide foundational knowledge about the Earth’s systems and the biosphere, and how this relates to the built environment

demonstrate the range of climate change and sustainability challenges and solutions

support students in developing skills in applying design and systems thinking to explore and evaluate possible responses to these sustainability challenges

provide students with a critical understanding of the role of planning, real estate and environmental management professions in moving towards a sustainable future

Students should be able to: 

The learning is organised to introduce issues connected with sustainability challenges and responses to them. Sessions throughout the unit build on earlier work, both in terms of practical skills and concepts.

Authentic assessment is enabled in two ways: first by creating opportunities through the assessments to evaluate real-life examples of sustainability interventions.

Second: many forms of professional accreditation require evidence of reflective practice. The guided reflective piece of writing will provide practice in a task that students may be asked to perform as part of Continuing Professional Development. In addition, the requirement to include images of hand-written work-in-progress of the writing task/s in the Guided Reflective Journal encourages the generation of students’ own content and ideas without AI. These can   be complemented with the guided use of AI, allowing for comparison and the development of a critical approach to the value and limits of different ways of generating knowledge.

The workshops are highly interactive, utilising multiple award-winning learning approaches, to enhance student engagement and peer-learning (Ketso) and to develop systems-thinking skills through applying sustainability principles to projects and ideas at multiple levels of scale (RoundView). All students are expected to contribute to the peer-learning process in the workshops.

Opportunities for peer learning are built into the lectures, using both hands-on learning tools (Ketso Connect) and digital tools to capture and share images of the outcomes. Formative feedback is used during the teaching through digital surveys/ quizzes to allow for visual representations of the class responses in real time.

Teaching is synchronous and in-person, with opportunities for review and deepening learning made available through the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). 

Classify sustainability challenges faced by society, and identify possible solutions to them

Identify links between the built environment and climate change mitigation and adaptation

Discuss the value and need for community and stakeholder engagement in moving towards sustainable futures

Critically analyse sustainability interventions in the built environment 
Evaluate the role of the planning / real estate / environmental management professions in moving towards sustainable futures

Apply a systems-based framework of sustainability to assess possible design interventions in the built environment

Construct and compare different ways to structure writing projects

Appraise skills developed, student’s own learning process and shifts in understanding

Evaluate the relevance of sustainability to the student’s own career trajectory

Assignment 1 - Annotated writing plan (750 words) 20%

Assignment 2 - Guided reflective journal (2250 words) 80%

Substantive, written feedback for all assignments is provided through TurnItIn.

Opportunities for peer learning and formative feedback to students are built in throughout the module. Interactive workshops and the groupwork activity based on the field trip are designed to build skills in applying sustainability principles and critical thinking, as well as to give an opportunity for the tutors to give formative feedback on assignments.

At various intervals throughout the module, interactive learning evaluations will be given, to be completed in class, with discussion of the answers in class. These are designed to give immediate formative feedback on understanding of key concepts of the module, and to provide an ongoing opportunity to review learning. These offer an opportunity for self-assessment of learning and feedback on the learning. They will provide information to the course tutor to help steer the teaching, but will not be used to influence the mark for the module.

The tutor is available to discuss issues in relation to the module at the lectures and workshops and during office hours.

Feedback from students is gathered from informal discussions during workshops and from module review forms at the end of the module. 

Birkeland, J. and Knight-Lenihan, S.  (2016). Biodiversity offsetting and net positive design. Journal of Urban Design, 21(1): 50-66
Bulkeley, H., (2012). Cities and Climate Change, Taylor & Francis, London.
Chatterton, Paul. 2013. “Towards an Agenda for Post-Carbon Cities: Lessons from Lilac, the UK’s First Ecological, Affordable Cohousing Community.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37 (5): 1654–74. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12009.
Hamdi, N., (2010). The placemaker's guide to building community. London, Earthscan 
Holmberg, J. & Robert, K. H. (2000) Backcasting — a framework for strategic planning, International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 7:4, 291-308
Hough, M., (2006). Cities and Natural Process, Routledge, London.
Howe, Joe M., and Iain White. 2004. “Like a Fish Out of Water: The Relationship between Planning and Flood Risk Management in the UK.” Planning Practice and Research 19 (4): 415–25.
Tippett, J. and How, F. 2020. ‘Where to lean the ladder of participation: a normative heuristic for effective coproduction processes’, Town Planning Review, 91, (2), 109–132.  https://doi.org/10.3828/tpr.2020.7 
Wheeler, S. M. and Beatley, T. (eds)., (2014) Sustainable Urban Development Reader, Routledge, Basingstoke