Environment and Planning
Environment and Planning explores how cities can sustain a high quality of life for their citizens without depleting natural resources, demanding extensive urban transformation in highly urbanised societies. Environmental planners work across municipal, city, regional, and national levels to translate sustainability policies into practical plans and scenarios, assess the contributions of those plans to sustainable urban development, and manage collaboration among diverse stakeholders.
Planning in this context requires an interdisciplinary approach combining governance principles from planning theory and political science, futures studies for integrating scenarios and visions into planning. You will learn to apply social and natural science methodologies for qualitative and quantitative assessments of plans and policies, using a systems perspective to analyse complex, multidimensional urban challenges while maintaining a holistic view. Actor-structure theory further equips you to understand how citizens’ freedom of action is shaped by cultural, societal, and planning structures.
Graduates are prepared for professional roles where they produce planning documents in the form of future visions and scenarios, ensuring these proposals are grounded in scientific analysis and contribute meaningfully to sustainable urban development. They have skills to evaluate and assess policies and plans using both established and newly developed tools and to provide critical feedback to decision-makers. Furthermore, they know how to identify, organise, and coordinate the diverse actors required for successful implementation of sustainable urban strategies, managing collaborative processes and addressing potential conflicts to achieve robust solutions. This specialisation equips professionals to contribute to transformative planning processes, supporting sustainable urban development through innovative, interdisciplinary approaches and effective stakeholder engagement.