Course summary

Our Spatial Planning PGDip gives you the academic and professional core knowledge, understanding and skills to enable you to practise professionally as a town and country planner. Planning is about understanding places and place making. This ensures that we can achieve the best social, economic and environmental outcomes. We offer a friendly and supportive environment for you to make the transition towards a career in: •planning •wider built environment professions. Through our high quality research and teaching we provide you with a complete planning education: •academic core knowledge •understanding •skills. This equips you to embark on your professional planning career. You will be able to apply your planning knowledge and deal with the rapidly changing context of real world planning and the problem solving this requires. The course is a conversion degree so you do not need to have studied planning before. It is for anyone with an interest in planning - thinking about how people, places and the environment interact. The course attracts students from a range of backgrounds and nationalities. Delivery: Leading planning academics teach our modules. They are members of planning teaching staff in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape. Their world-leading research informs the teaching programme. We teach the course on our Newcastle campus. You can study full time over 9 months or part time over 21 months. If you study full time you are usually expected to attend 12 hours of taught contact time per week. You will need to allow around 28 hours of independent study per week. Contact hours and independent study times will vary depending on modules. Part time study consists of the same modules and options as the full time programme. If you study part time, we timetable teaching for day release (one full day per week). The majority of the course consists of a series of compulsory modules. They will introduce you to the core values and principles of planning. You will build on these throughout the rest of your studies and professional life. The main focus of these modules is the UK system complemented by international examples. You will also have a choice of optional modules. These help you to develop a specialisation in planning practice informed by the latest research. We deliver knowledge and skills through a series of lecture-based modules in semester one and two. We also deliver teaching through: •workshops •seminars •tutorials •optional international field trips (depending on the module). Accreditation: This course has partial (spatial) accreditation from the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI). The RTPI is the UK's leading planning body for spatial, sustainable and inclusive planning. It is the largest planning institute in Europe with over 23,000 members. Facilities: You will have access to a dedicated social space for planning students, with computing and printing facilities. This is in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape.