The Master of Planning course at University of Calgary equips future planners with the skills necessary to work with the private sector, community members and local governments.

School: University of Calgary, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape
Course: Master of Planning
Location: Calgary, Canada
Course dates: September 2022 to June 2025
Application deadline: 15 January 2022

The Master of Planning program at the University of Calgary prepares future professional planners with the knowledge and skills necessary to work effectively with other professions, community members, local governments and the private sector in a wide range of roles related to solving problems and making great cities and communities that are sustainable, vibrant, healthy and equitable.

Planners are active changemakers, shaping communities and cities that are responsive to the future's challenges and opportunities. The MPlan program teaches students how to understand and communicate the connection between policy and planning decisions and the spatial forms they create on the ground.

Students learn to design and graphic skills and work closely in cross-professional, interdisciplinary teams – often directly with community associations – to explore planning issues and the role of professional planners.

The curriculum is guided by four principles:

Design and studio-based: 'studio' is a teaching and learning format that engages students in experiential learning through problem identification, analysis, and the design of interventions for preferred outcomes.

A traditional part of design education in architecture and landscape architecture puts students in real or simulated planning project situations where instructors engage with students in problem-solving that may result in physical or spatial design outcomes or policy and land use planning outcomes.

Interdisciplinarity: the professions of planning, architecture and landscape architecture share common ground in creating the built form and practice in the context of constructed human environments. Working together in interdisciplinary teams is a necessity for professional success and has been one of our school's core educational values since its founding.

Sustainability: constructed human environments are complex and multi-faceted systems with social, cultural, technological, ecological, and economic flows and inter-relationships. The challenge for the professions of planning, architecture, and landscape architecture is to ensure that built forms do not create social, economic, and ecological conflicts and trade-offs.

Real-world problem solving: professional practice means working with people within legal and governmental institutional frameworks. It is vital that professional practice education be placed in that context. Program courses and studios incorporate the real-world context of practice as part of a student's experiential learning.

Applications to this course have now closed.

Top image: Agrohood Masterplan by student Tina Dadgostar, who completed the course in 2020.

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