MSc in Strategic Urban and Regional Planning

Our cities and regions are currently facing fundamental challenges related to climate change, globalization, urbanization, digitalization, and social inequality. Strategic urban and regional planning is one of the most powerful local instruments to (re)shape long-term urban and regional development and create sustainable cities and regions of tomorrow.

The program provides you with the opportunity to advance your knowledge about societal change and enhance your abilities to engage in complex planning processes and agendas, in collaboration with citizens and other stakeholders. The program has a special focus on regional development challenges in European countries.

The program offers training in urban and regional planning, with a focus on strategic urban and regional planning. Core elements are identifying and managing planning issues within complex social, environmental, and economic realities. This helps you develop skills in conducting studies, formulating strategies, and coordinating overall planning at various levels of society. Our teaching profile is integrated with advanced research in urban and regional planning. The program offers direct contact with ongoing research and there is a close collaboration with public and private employers offering real-world learning opportunities. As a student, you can tailor your studies in your area of interest, profession, or field of expertise. During the third semester of the program, you can choose elective courses, studies abroad and internships, at businesses, organizations, or research institutes in Sweden or abroad.

Syllabus and course details

Course details

The program runs over two years and encompasses 120 credits, including a thesis.

Semester 1 and 2

In the first two semesters, the program consists of compulsory courses (60 credits) characterized by both knowledge and skills within strategic urban and regional planning. The second term concludes with a course to prepare for writing a thesis in strategic urban and regional planning.

Semester 3

In the third semester, the program allows students an individual specialization through studies abroad, internships, and elective courses. The elective courses give the student opportunities to deepen the students’ knowledge and skills in, for example, health, visualization, foodscapes, urban sustainability, and the politics of planning. The internship can be performed in Sweden or abroad where the students carry out a specific task which links to the activities of the chosen organization and the student's future professional interests.

Semester 4

The topic of the master’s thesis is decided together with the supervisor. The master’s thesis shall be written within the main area of study, urban and regional planning, and should integrate the knowledge, skills, and theoretical approaches garnered in the first three semesters.

Syllabus

Introduction

The master’s program in Strategic Urban and Regional Planning is an educational program at an advanced level that leads to a master’s degree in urban and regional planning. The education is focused on strategic urban and regional planning and gives students an understanding of long-term and complex urban and regional planning processes. A planner who works with strategic planning must be able to lead overall planning at various levels of society: local, national, international, and global. Such planning processes involve many different stakeholders within public administration, the business world, and civil society. The program focuses on questions and problems in a European context. Particular emphasis is placed on the sustainability challenges that urban areas and regions are facing, including such issues as climate change, globalization, urbanization, digitalization, and social inequality. In order to be able to manage these challenges, students must be able to make well-founded assessments of a complex reality and use them to define objectives, formulate strategy, and direct planning. The program prepares students to conduct inquiries and to carry out project management, work management, and process management, within urban and regional planning. It provides opportunities for exchange visits and work placements and qualifies students for subsequent postgraduate education.

Aim

National Qualifications according to the Swedish Higher Education Act

Knowledge and understanding

For a Degree of Master (120 credits) the student shall

• demonstrate knowledge and understanding in urban and regional planning, including both broad knowledge of the field and a considerable degree of specialized knowledge in certain areas of the field as well as insight into current research and development work, and
• demonstrate specialized methodological knowledge in urban and regional planning.

Competence and skills

For a Degree of Master (120 credits) the student shall

• demonstrate the ability to critically and systematically integrate knowledge and analyze, assess and deal with complex phenomena, issues and situations even with limited information
• demonstrate the ability to identify and formulate issues critically, autonomously, and creatively as well as to plan and, using appropriate methods, undertake advanced tasks within predetermined time frames and so contribute to the formation of knowledge as well as the ability to evaluate this work
• demonstrate the ability in speech and writing both nationally and internationally to clearly report and discuss his or her conclusions and the knowledge and arguments on which they are based in dialogue with different audiences, and
• demonstrate the skills required for participation in research and development work or autonomous employment in some other qualified capacity.

Judgment and approach

For a Degree of Master (120 credits) the student shall

• demonstrate the ability to make assessments in urban and regional planning informed by relevant disciplinary, social, and ethical issues and also to demonstrate awareness of ethical aspects of research and development work
• demonstrate insight into the possibilities and limitations of research, its role in society and the responsibility of the individual for how it is used, and
• demonstrate the ability to identify the personal need for further knowledge and take responsibility for his or her ongoing learning.

Teaching and working methods

The education is problem-focussed, and most of the courses take overarching issues as their starting point, and these issues are subsequently broken down and applied in various projects. Teaching methods include lectures, seminars, excursions, project work, computer exercises, and tutorial supervision. During the program, students get to improve their oral and written communication skills. A recurrent component of most courses is that students are to learn to use digital tools to visualize and communicate knowledge and processes that are relevant for urban and regional planning. Examples of such tools are geographical information systems (GIS), visualization, and scenario-based methods. The program also contains several exercises in the field of strategic physical planning.

Research

Technology and Social Change

So much of our lives depend on technology. The development and use of technology create possibilities as well as social, ethical, and political dilemmas. That’s what we study at Tema T – Technology and Social Change.

The role of urban and regional planning in promoting sustainability energy transitions in the transport sector

Planning for a sustainable energy transition in the transport sector is becoming increasingly important, especially with the implementation of the global sustainability goals, so also in Swedish municipalities and regions.

Households infrastructure junctions

Sustainable energy systems are becoming increasingly integrated at the local level. This project focuses on the integration of energy systems from a user perspective.

Planning sustainable energy transition

This project will identify and in collaboration with regional and municipal actors further develop instruments and tools that give urban and regional planners a more active role in shaping a sustainable energy transition.

_Are you curious about what it is like to study at LiU? Join us for a chat about what it is like to live and study on our campuses in Sweden. We offer free webinars and recordings for both prospective and admitted degree students throughout the year. Visit our _ _Meet us online _ _page. _

About Linköping University

Linköping University will never rest on its laurels.

In close collaboration with the business world and society, Linköping University (LiU) conducts world-leading, boundary-crossing research in fields including materials science, IT and hearing. In the same spirit, the university offers many innovative educational programs, many of them with a clear vocational focus, leading to qualification as, for example, doctors, teachers, economists, and engineers.

The university has 32,000 students and 4,000 employees on four campuses. Together we seek answers to the complex questions facing us today. Our students are among the most desirable in the labor market and international rankings consistently place LiU as a leading global university.

LiU achieved university status in 1975 and innovation is our only tradition.

History of Linköping University

In 1975 Sweden’s sixth university was founded in Linköping. Since then Linköping University (LiU) has grown considerably, expanding to Norrköping and Stockholm.

Linköping has been an important center of learning since medieval times when Linköping Cathedral offered a school with extensive international contacts and its own student hall in Paris. In 1627 the Cathedral School became the third upper secondary school in Sweden and in 1843 a college for elementary school teachers began operations. In Norrköping, the Fröbel Institute – Sweden’s first college for training pre-school teachers – was founded in 1902.

From university college to university

What would later become Linköping University began to take shape in the mid-1960s. Higher education in Sweden was expanding and in 1965 the Swedish Parliament decided to establish a branch of Stockholm University, together with a university college of engineering and medicine, in Linköping.

In the autumn of 1967, the branch of Stockholm University moved into premises in central Linköping. There the first students could take courses in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Two years later the units for engineering and medicine got underway.

In 1970 education and research started moving into the recently built Campus Valla, a short distance from the town center. Buildings A and B were the first to be completed. The same year the various parts were merged to form Linköping University College, including faculties of engineering, medicine and arts, and sciences.

The new university college was the first in Sweden to offer study programs in Industrial Engineering and Management and Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering, both starting in 1969. A few years later, in 1975, Linköping University launched Sweden’s first Computer Science and Engineering program.

1975 was also the year when Linköping University College became Linköping University, the sixth university in Sweden. In line with the 1977 reform of the Swedish higher education system, teacher education was also transferred to Linköping University.

Interdisciplinary research and problem-based learning

Linköping University has always worked with innovation in education and research. In 1980 the newly formed Department of Thematic Studies adopted an approach that was new in Sweden. Research was organized in interdisciplinary themes, such as Technology and Social Change or Water and Environmental Studies. Scientists worked across boundaries to solve complex problems. LiU was also first in Sweden to introduce graduate research schools for different themes. The model later spread to other parts of the university and became a national success.

The new Faculty of Health Sciences (Hälsouniversitetet), formed in 1986, combined governmentally and regionally funded education. It introduced a radically changed methodology, being the first in Sweden to use problem-based learning, PBL. Later, LiU became the first university in the world to allow students from different health sciences programs to treat actual patients on a student-managed training ward.

Expansion to Norrköping – and Stockholm

A significant milestone in the history of the University was the opening of Campus Norrköping in 1997. Some programs had previously operated from Norrköping, but the number of students now grew drastically in line with government efforts to expand higher education. Historical factories in the former industrial district were again filled with life, as they were filled with classrooms, laboratories, cafés, a library and of course students.

Linköping University also expanded to Stockholm when the reputable Carl Malmsten School of Furniture sought a collaborative partner from the academic sector. The Malmsten furniture design and handicraft programs became part of LiU in 2000. After almost 60 years at Södermalm in central Stockholm, Malmstens moved to new premises on the island of Lidingö in the autumn of 2009. LiU got its fourth campus.

Buro Millennial / Pexels

LiU in figures

Some important figures for Linköping University.

Education

• 32,000 students (full-time equivalents 17,907)
• 21,400 on Campus Valla
• 5,500 on Campus Norrköping
• 3,900 on University Hospital Campus (US)
• 2,100 distance students and students in other locations, including Campus Lidingö

(Some students take courses on more than one campus.)

• 120 study programs, of which 27 are international programs in English
• 550 single-subject courses
• Exchange agreements with 400 universities in 50 countries
• 2,400 international students
• 2,200 first cycle degrees
• 2,700 second-cycle degrees

Research and scientific training

• 300 professors
• 1,200 PhD students
• 40 licentiate degrees
• 140 doctoral degrees

Staff

• 4,000 employees (full-time equivalents 3,156)