MSc in Urban and Regional Planning

The Planning profession has a long and heterogeneous tradition in the European countries (Town and Country Planning, Raumplanung, Aménagement du territoire, Urbanisme), and is officially recognized under the EU Directive 2005/36/CE. Acknowledging this diversity, the Master program in Urban and Regional Planning offered at Politecnico di Torino provides training for planners able to solve complex problems related to the present and future of cities and territories: environmental sustainability, social inclusion, climate change, energy efficiency, mobility, land take a reduction, landscape, and heritage preservation.

Established in the academic year 2005/06, since the year 2017/2018, the Master program introduced an English-language curriculum that further engages with global challenges and train graduate students for the international labor’s market, in line with the objectives of the UN Agenda 2030 and New Urban Agenda (point 102).

IMPORTANT NOTE: the MS in Urban and Regional Planning constitutes the updated and improved version of the MS in Territorial, Urban, Environmental and Landscape Planning, that has been offered at Politecnico di Torino in the period 2005-2023. The new MS maintains the key assets of the previous course, while at the same time actualising its contents and teaching methods, to prepare its students to face new and emerging territorial development and planning challenges.

Accreditation

This Master Programme has been awarded the Certificate of Excellence of the Association of European Schools of Planning – AESOP.

Moreover, it provides students with the possibility to study abroad thanks to an agreement with top universities located in four different continents.

The program offers two curricula:

• Planning for the Global Urban Agenda (in English)
• Urban and Regional Planning for Ecological Transition (in Italian)

Both curricula offer a combination of teaching units, to provide knowledge and analytical skills in several disciplines, and multidisciplinary cross-curricular studios that focus around real case studies, with the aim of learning by doing to formulate and assess the implementation of spatial policies, strategies, programs, plans, and projects.

The activities in the first term are designed to give students a solid background in areas closely related to the formulation of local planning policies: regulatory issues associated with planning activities, urban and regional geography, sociology of the environment, history of territorial heritage.

In the second term, students will simulate a process for drawing up a plan at the local level, in addition to completing their knowledge in subject areas closely related to the formulation of planning tools, such as transport planning, and gaining a solid understanding of the role of the European Union in urban and territorial policies.

During the third term, students will gain specific knowledge in the field of land protection and water management, allowing them to address regional and landscape planning issues and interact with specialists. They will also expand their knowledge of policies and processes for territorial and strategic planning and will simulate a process for drawing up a territorial and landscape plan.

The fourth term is wholly dedicated to thesis preparation. Students are given an alternative between a theoretical thesis, or a practical thesis which entails an internship period.

• The profiles of all lecturers and the presentations of all courses are available in the Yearbook 2021/2022
• For more information, contact us through the format below
• To find out more about entry requirements, application deadlines and for all practical information related to enrolment (documents, scholarships, tuition fees, accommodation services, etc.), click on the button below!

The MS in Urban and Regional Planning offered at Politecnico di Torino trains “planners” provided with skills that allow them to play a coordination role within project teams engaged in territorial and urban planning, landscape planning activities, and development of strategies, policies, and projects of urban and territorial transformations.

This professional profile is able to cooperate with experts in diverse disciplines to address the issues of spatial management and planning at different scales, with particular attention to the centrality of the current environmental, energy, and sustainability issues.

They are able to develop strategies, policies, and projects of urban and territorial transformations that have at its center a proper use of local resources and to involve concerned stakeholders (institutional, economic, social), with the ability to interact with non-experts people too, stimulating their participation.

The planners we train works in public administrations, planning, and design offices, private companies, consulting firms, and NGOs.

• Urban/Regional planners designing spatial plans at various scales
• Expert in environmental and landscape planning conservation
• Urban managers developing territorial strategies policies
• Planner and spatial analysts, able to design and manage Geographic Information Systems