Development Administration and Planning

This MSc equips students with the analytical, methodological and practical expertise needed to positively contribute to development in countries where they are actively involved. Students acquire the tools necessary to respond to a diverse range of problems including productive capacity, intersectoral integration, economic and social diversification, and self-sufficiency.

Students develop the ability to analyse the development process and to formulate appropriate policies for meeting development goals. The field trip, conducted in a developing country, provides the opportunity to study the problems encountered in development, and the cultural, administrative and institutional context in which decisions are made.

Students undertake modules to the value of 180 credits.

The programme consists of four core modules (90 credits), optional modules (30 credits) and dissertation (60).

A Postgraduate Diploma, four core modules (90 credits), optional modules (30 credits), full-time nine months, is offered.

A Postgraduate Certificate, four optional modules (60 credits), full-time 15 weeks or flexible study over a period of up to two years, is offered.

Core modules

Four core modules 

• Contemporary Approaches to Development Management
• Development in Practice
• Critical Ideas of Development Conceptions and Realities
• Society and Market: Private Agency for Development

Recommended optional modules include:

• Adapting Cities to Climate Change in the Global South
• Cost Benefit Analysis: Theory and Practice
• Critical Urbanism Studio I - Learning from Informality: Case Studies and Alternatives
• Critical Urbanism Studio II - Investigative Design Strategies for Contested Spaces
• Disaster Risk Reduction in Cities
• Food and the City
• Gender in Policy and Planning
• Housing as urbanism: housing policy and the search for scale
• Housing policies: practical dimensions and alternative options
• Industrialisation and Infrastructure
• Land, Food and Agriculture
• Neo-Structuralism and the Developmental State
• Social Diversity, Inequality and Poverty
• Social Policy and Citizenship
• The City and Its Relations: Context, Institutions and Actors in Urban Development Planning
• The Political Ecology of Environmental Change
• Transport Equity and Urban Mobility
• Transforming Local Areas: Urban Design for Development
• Urbanisation and Development
• Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture: Knowledge Systems in the Global South

Or any other open MSc module in The Bartlett School of Planning.

Please note: not all optional modules listed above may be available.

Dissertation/report

All MSc students submit a 10,000-word paper on a topic related to the main themes of the programme. The topic is chosen by the student in dialogue with the Programme Director.

Teaching and learning

The programme consists of reading, essay writing and individual and group project work, in the context of lectures, seminars, workshops, case study analysis, and a field trip abroad. In recent years field trip destinations have included Uganda and Ethiopia. Student performance is assessed through coursework, unseen examinations and a final dissertation report.

Fieldwork

The overseas fieldwork trip is a practical research-based residential that helps draw the various elements of the degree together.

The DPU will cover the following costs of the field trip: return flights, visas, travel insurance, accommodation and fees, and costs of local experts and inputs. However, food, local travel and incidental expenses of a personal nature will not be covered by the DPU.

The normal minimum qualifications are an upper second-class UK Bachelor's degree or an overseas qualification of an equivalent standard, or a lower second-class UK Bachelor's degree, or an equivalent overseas qualification, in a subject appropriate to the programme, plus relevant work experience. 
In rare cases, applicants with degrees below this standard will be considered if they have significant relevant professional experience.
In all cases, successful applicants are expected to provide good references and a strong personal statement, which adequately demonstrate the applicant’s interest in the topics addressed by this programme.