Planning is about changing the places within which we live. How we can transform and improve our cities, towns, villages, neighbourhoods and communities. It affects our everyday lives and is an extremely exciting discipline to study at university.

A degree in Planning, Environment and Development provides you with strong analytical skills, the ability to think critically about development and environmental issues, and ultimately shape processes of city growth and development. Currently, our cities face major challenges – attracting investment, creating jobs, protecting the environment, energy policy, housing supply, transport links, providing local amenities – and planning affects how these things happen. Therefore, as future planners you will have a very important role to play in shaping the future.

Planning is a broad subject matter and planners perform many different roles relating to the natural, physical, economic, social and cultural environments that we live in. Given this, planning offers a wide spectrum of employment opportunities in both the public and private sectors. Studying planning will equip you with the knowledge to understand how cities, towns, villages, communities and neighbourhoods function and operate, and then have the skills to make decisions that shape how they grow and prosper.

Although the majority of our graduates pursue careers in planning, the knowledge and skills developed also enable them to develop careers in a wide range of other sectors both in the UK and abroad. Recently, for example, graduates have found employment in China, the USA and New Zealand.

Career sectors that have attracted our graduates in recent years include planning authorities (Northern Ireland, Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland), private planning practice, management, design consultants, housing authorities, health trusts, conservation and environmental organisations, teaching (particularly geography), countryside stewardship, software development and various graduate programmes.

This degree is closely aligned to the requirements of the planning sector and draws on practitioners as guest lecturers. We regularly consult with employers, and links are further enhanced through formal partnership meetings with the bodies that accredit our courses (RICS and RTPI).

We have developed strong relationships with, for example, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, the Planning Division of the Department of the Environment, and the Department for Regional Development, and draw on such experts in the design of the degree.

Many of our graduates go on to one of our two Masters programmes to complete their RTPI accreditation, or other postgraduate training, including PhD study; see the School website for further information.