in Urban Planning and Development with a Professional Placement Year

Urban planning and development is the discipline that shapes how cities, towns, and communities grow, change, and function. Planners are responsible for making decisions about where housing, employment, transport, green space, and public services are located, and for mediating between the competing interests of residents, developers, businesses, and governments in determining how land is used. It is a discipline that combines spatial thinking, social analysis, environmental awareness, and an understanding of the legal and policy frameworks that govern development, making it as relevant to questions of housing affordability and neighbourhood inequality as to strategic infrastructure and climate adaptation.

At Cardiff University, this programme is offered as Urban Planning and Development with a Professional Placement Year, providing hands-on work experience in a planning context alongside the academic curriculum. The placement gives you the opportunity to work in a local authority planning department, a development company, a consultancy, or another organisation involved in shaping the built environment, applying your academic learning to real decisions and processes and building the professional skills and contacts that support strong career outcomes. Cardiff itself is a rapidly evolving city, and studying planning here means engaging with a real and complex urban environment that illustrates many of the key challenges the discipline addresses.

The programme is likely to be accredited by the Royal Town Planning Institute, which is the professional body for planners in the UK.

Graduates in urban planning and development go on to careers as town planners in local authorities, in the private development sector, in transport planning, in housing organisations, and in consultancies that advise developers and public bodies. The Royal Town Planning Institute's qualification is widely sought in the profession, and many graduates continue to build towards chartered planner status. Some pursue postgraduate study in planning, urban design, housing, or environmental management.