Areas and projects
Planning offers a lively and interactive environment for learning, with a strong commitment to work at the cutting edge of current theoretical, practice and policy debates. Planning is a topic with links that extend to the social sciences and humanities, design and engineering, history, and forecasting. Students are offered supervisory support across a range of topic areas related to Planning and Landscape's core research specialisms of environmental planning and management and spatial planning and development, as well as to individual staff members' research interests.
All research students in Planning are formally attached to the disciplines' designated research centres: the Centre for Urban and Regional Ecology (CURE) and the Centre for Urban Policy Studies (CUPS). This aims to provide a collegiate working environment to encourage cross-fertilisation of ideas and pooling of skills amongst academic staff, researchers and research students.
The Centre for Urban Policy Studies (concerned with urban policy evaluation, territorial spatial planning, and analysis of neighbourhood dynamics) and Centre for Urban and Regional Ecology (concerned with environmental ecology, strategic and environmental assessment, and sustainable development), provide the focus for much of the research activities undertaken by staff and postgraduate researchers.
Our main areas of research expertise include:
- Environmental Planning and Management: environmental reporting and assessment; EIA and SEA processes and frameworks; flood prevention and urban drainage; sustainability and environmental governance; diversity and multi-functional landscapes; contaminated land; ecologically informed design and planning; management of natural resources; and coastal planning.
- Spatial Planning and Urban Development: spatial planning systems; strategic and regional planning; rural policy; monitoring and evaluation methodologies; urban regeneration and renewal; territorial governance; urban design and the public realm; local and regional economic development; community participation and planning; quantitative indicator research; GIS and information management.