 The Master of Urban and Regional Planning degree is a professionally accredited degree by the Planning Institute of Australia. We offer you a unique learning environment and a competitive advantage by offering you a wide range and a unique blend of core science and social science courses. The Urban and Regional Planning degree is primarily about developing graduates with a mix of academic experiences and strategic and lateral thinkers. We have the skills and capacity to work independently and collaboratively in the workplace and this is achieved via a powerful blend of academic learning, fieldwork, research and the opportunity to undertake workplace experience with the Planning Agency. Now building on your existing capacities you'll be actively encouraged and supported to extend yourself and focus on real-world issues and developing a comprehensive set of skills and knowledge and not only that your knowledge will be applied in a number of different settings with key planning actors and agents. Our teaching and learning moves beyond the lecture theatre and seminar room into real planning spaces within the state and the local government. We take you into areas such as local government council meetings and the Planning Minister's office and we work with private sector through workshops on planning and urban design consultancies and we take site visits to property development projects around Perth. You will hone your job-ready skills and expertise on real planning and development sites through master plan projects and through work placement with planning agencies. These activities will expose you to the realities of planning and working they'll let you make important network connections and offer an opportunity to impress prospective employers. Depending on your previous studies and mode of study whether it's full-time or part-time the master's program can be completed in as little as 1.5 years. The degree can be completed via a coursework only pathway or via a coursework and dissertation. So we offer a number of discrete streams to suit your passion and resolve major urban and regional planning problems facing humanity today. Currently there are four streams that group core units or classes into distinctive specializations and you can choose from any number of these. In the first instance there is straight planning where you complete five core planning and urban design based units. Secondly we have geographic information systems or GIS and spatial analysis where you'll complete set level four and five units in GIS plus various regional development and planning units. This will give you strong quantitative skills. The third stream is international development where you select from a group of elective units from the new international development studies program from across the university. The fourth stream is environmental planning and policy where you'll select from key environmental science and agricultural resource economics units. The strengths of the course come from the professionally accredited qualification and we have a blend of core and applied learning. Urban and regional planners are responsible for ensuring that cities and towns and regions have vibrant communities and economies and that they are ensuring a high quality of life and are environmentally stable. To achieve this planners need to develop a rounded understanding of different ways in which societies economies and environments interact and work with each other. You need to talk to and work with politicians planners and stakeholders you gain wisdom from their insights and their practical experience and you'll develop your own practical judgment through independent study and guided project work that develops both current development and compares these opportunities with international and historical examples. This qualification is versatile as it opens up a number of career opportunities in Australia and internationally. Our graduate planners are employed by local government, state government such as the Department of Planning or the Department of State Development and in private practice they work with planning consultancies and property developers and they work across a diverse range of areas including regional development, environmental management, urban design, public administration, public policy, social research, teaching, land development, social planning and community development. The world is at your door with this degree. So what I like about the Masters of Urban and Regional Planning is probably the variety. So there's the legislative and legal aspects which are obviously important if you want to be a planner but it's got quite a strategic focus which I really enjoy so there's academic aspects of planning and policy and there's also regional development and regional analysis which I really enjoy as well and it sounds like a bit of a cliche but I've met some really interesting people along the way with the Masters so I've met someone who does architecture in India and another girl who she grew up in the country so she has some really interesting perspectives on regional development and I've also met another girl who has a legal background. One of the reasons I chose the UWA Masters of Urban and Regional Planning is in comparison with some of the other Masters in this area. This one is actually quite good for career changes like me so my background is actually native title and education and I wasn't sure how I would go with something like this but I find that this is really interesting and it's also something that I can accomplish quite well so I would recommend it to anyone who's looking at a career change.