Urban policy and planning: Key themes

Course goals

• Understand the role of urban policy within the field of spatial planning;
• Develop arguments on how urban policies can be the background for new urban development opportunities, including urban regeneration projects, and for planning restrictions;
• Critically assess how policy and planning impacts real-life transformation processes that are both place-based and policy driven;
• Learn how urban development and planning can be influenced or shaped by urban policies in drawing planning advice;
• Critically reflect on how different urban policy and planning issues relate to and shape each other; and
• Develop a coherent, realistic and original research proposal.

In this course, we also work on developing self-regulation skills, study skills, and professional skills such as cooperation and teamwork, critical reflection and decision-making, and academic English.

Content

The course introduces students to important substantive policies that are fundamental for the governance and planning of cities and urban regions. The issue of urban policy is a core theme for many planners working in a range of contexts, making the political and policy challenges of cities important themes to understand. The course focuses on what urban policies and strategies can be used to improve planning practices and related operational urban plans and programs. The course will provide a critical examination of sectoral policies, such as climate policy, economic and social policies, among others. Additionally, the course will explore current issues and debates in selected sectoral planning systems, their institutions and planning instruments. This will provide students with insight into the institutional complexity in which urban planning, policy and practice operate, and the context in which urban plans are implemented and evaluated against. In the course, students will reflect on how a diversity of sectoral policies and planning systems shape urban development and how they relate to and interact with spatial planning.

Based on selected urban case studies illustrating different sectoral policies, students will acquire a better understanding of the complex interrelations between spatial planning and sectoral planning. They will learn about major policy issues and ways of thinking in different specialized planning systems, how they shape cities’ development, and reflect on resulting challenges in the governance of cities. In this way, students will learn how to critically assess and reflect on the expected policy and planning impacts in real-life and place-based policy processes. In this course, we will provide examples from cities around the world for students to connect urban policy and planning, and how they operate in practice.


This course is part of the learning trajectory  

• methods and techniques learning trajectory
• writing and argumentation learning trajectory