Urban Planning M.Sc.

 

The Master's program in Urban Planning aims to enable graduates to work as urban planners. This includes preparing urban development plans, implementing activities accompanying the planning process and controlling and steering tasks in the fields of urban and landscape planning and urban development. The modules of this course of studies reflect our faculty’s research strengths and teach a combination of design competence and broad interdisciplinary knowledge with particular focus on architecture.

From the beginning of their studies, students are trained to work and think in an interdisciplinary manner in order to be able to mediate between planning conditions, functional, spatial, social, technical, and legal requirements and design intentions.

 

At its core, this is a project-oriented course of study, which also has close links to professional practice and research. In the first three semesters, the projects each take up half of the student’s working time. The work can be in the form of a holistic architectural design project focused on structural engineering or as a student research project on partial aspects and architecturally relevant issues.

Each project implies looking at complex, partly interdisciplinary questions or design tasks in urban, village, or regional contexts, with the main focus on developing strategies for sustainable urban and landscape development and their management, innovative land development and redevelopment tasks, and dealing with cultural heritage.
Alongside project work there will be modules for you to acquire the key competences for professional practice and associated technical-scientific and artistic knowledge, skills, and abilities. You can particularly benefit from the fields of research where the faculty is involved in collaborations on current research topics.

The last semester is reserved for the Master’s thesis. Students should prove their advanced education in an integral project according to their individual qualifications.

Detailed information on the curriculum is available on the Faculty of Architecture's website.

 

Prerequisites

To be able to enroll in this course of study you must hold a first university degree, which, as a rule, is a Bachelor’s degree in architecture, city or spatial planning, or in another relevant discipline for this field. The required educational background is stipulated in the examination regulations. The faculty’s examination board determines whether applicants meet the admission requirements. More application information is available on the Faculty's webpage.

Students must submit proof of a six-month internship completed at an architectural firm by the time they register for their Master’s thesis at the very latest.

 

Career Prospects

This Master's course of study focuses on the comprehensive activities of architects in Germany and the European economic area. It trains students both for the classical fields of architectural work as well as for new ones. The typical spectrum of possible employers ranges from private architectural and planning firms to the construction and real estate industry, associations, institutions, and research institutions, and public administration, in particular construction and governmental planning authorities.

The contents and qualification goals of this German-taught course of studies and the modules of the Faculty of Architecture at RWTH Aachen University takes the requirements of the professional chambers for architects and urban planners and the requirements of the European and international educational guidelines as minimum standards. These requirements are however only met after both stages are completed, ie. B.Sc. Architecture and MSc. Architecture or M.Sc. Urban Planning.

The Master's degree enable students to work in high positions in public administration or to pursue a doctorate at a European university. It also makes them eligible to start a technical traineeship leading to a completed German second state examination as a construction assessor or governmental master builder.

 

Module Handbook and Examination Regulations

The module handbook provides a description of all modules of a degree program and offers a comprehensive insight into the program contents.

The examination regulations are comprised of legally binding provisions on learning objectives, prerequisites for study, the course structure and processes, and examination procedures.

Regulations that generally apply to all Bachelor's and Master's degree programs, including information on language proficiency requirements, can be found in RWTH's General Examination Regulations. These general regulations are further specified and complemented by the subject-specific examination regulations.

If two examination regulations are valid for a degree program during a transition phase, the most current version shall apply to students enrolling in the program for the first time.

Please note that only the German examination regulations are legally binding.

Module Handbook
Subject-Specific Examination Regulations
RWTH's General Examination Regulations

 

Faculty

The Master course of study in Urban Planning is offered by the Faculty of Architecture.