We launched our MA Urban Planning and Resilience before the pandemic in 2020. Amazingly, that same pandemic has turned all of us into masters of resilience. 

  

There is what is traditionally thought of as resilience, the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. There are also other environmental and urban definitions of resilience, including the strength and flexibility to cope with dramatic climate related events such as fires, flooding and hurricanes, and the overall ‘capacity of a city (individuals, communities, institutions, businesses and systems) to survive, adapt and thrive no matter what kinds of chronic stresses or acute shocks they experience. 

  

On the MA Urban Planning and Resilience, the Kent School of Architecture and Planning convenes the best minds in the world to tackle its most urgent challenges to help realise its most exciting opportunities. 

  

Our focus is on resilience and sustainability in planning enabling students to be well placed to work in a number of emerging planning careers including planning for renewable infrastructure, climate change adaptation and roles that combine planning with resilience design and practice. 

  

The programme provides students with the key knowledge and expertise in core planning topics such as planning theory, planning policy, planning legislation, macro and micro economic development, planning law and politics, development viability, and placemaking for climate adaptation and mitigation to build urban resilience through planning policy. 

  

The curriculum, mapped onto the learning outcomes for Royal Town Planning Institute, embeds a systems approach in the modules and balances theory with practice. 

  

The MA Urban Planning & Resilience also draws on international insights from the Global Resilient Cities Network, the World Economic Forum, the Global Infrastrucure Hub, C40, the Climate Bonds Initiative, and Chief Resilience Officers and planning practitioners at the cutting edge of planning and resilience practice around the world.