MA Urban and Regional Planning & RTPI Apprenticeship Degree Welcome to MORE 2026

Johannes Novy (Course Leader, MA Urban and Regional Planning), John Somers (Course Leader, RTPI Apprenticeship – Urban and Regional Planning MA)

MA Urban and Regional Planning and the RTPI Apprenticeship offer a rich, practice-focused learning environment which go beyond theory, engaging students with experienced planning professionals and active real-world challenges. 

Regular teaching on MAURP was enriched again this year by guest lectures and workshops with leading practitioners, reflecting our commitment to learning that matters for practice. Our ongoing collaboration with the City of Westminster enabled students to learn first hand about consultation and engagement in plan making through a collaborative exercise and, in a separate consultancy-style project, to act as planning consultants as the council prepares its new City Plan. Rather than theorising about planning in the abstract, they were asked to engage with real world challenges, developing report topics that spoke directly to Westminster’s ambitions around economic development, community led development, diversity, culture led regeneration, urban resilience and sustainable mobility. The students’ dissertation topics reflect the breadth of the planning discipline and the diversity of interests, perspectives and questions the students bring to it.  

Our RTPI Level 7 Apprenticeship pathway also continued to thrive, with strong employer engagement, healthy apprentice numbers and consistently positive feedback. Among other activities, apprentices took part in a mock planning inquiry, gaining insight into the rigour and adversarial dynamics of the inquiry process. The programme’s momentum was recognised in November 2024, when it received an Ofsted rating of ‘Good’ – which makes it all the more regrettable that the UK Government has chosen to withdraw levy funding for Level 7 education for apprentices aged 22 and over. This means that, unfortunately, we are no longer recruiting apprentices, but are seeing our employers continuing to utilise our Part Time degree offer to give their employees the essential knowledge, skills and behaviours. 

The sister courses of MAURP and RTPI Apprenticeship enjoyed a joint field trip to Brussels and Ghent which gave students the chance to engage with stakeholders, encounter cutting edge planning projects and exchange with MA Urban Studies students at Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB).

Dissertations

The range of dissertation topics demonstrates the breadth of issues the MAURP course challenges students to confront, and their ambition to interrogate the cities we live in.

Subjects span from the sustainability challenges at the top of the planning agenda – low-carbon retrofit (William Durston), net-zero housing (Alexandra Uvarova), circular construction (Amy Vallintine) and green space in high-density boroughs (Jaap Palray) – to more unexpected and original lines of enquiry: the regulation of political street art (Sakina Mohamed), women’s safety in stations (Eve Johnson-Jones) and the value of  acoustics and listening in the city (Jasmine Moffat).