Geography and Planning

Geography and planning is a combination that addresses how we understand and manage space, place, and the built environment. Geography provides the analytical tools to examine how landscapes, cities, regions, and ecosystems are shaped by natural processes and human activity. Planning is the professional discipline responsible for regulating and directing land use, development, and the design of urban and rural environments, ensuring that growth and change happen in ways that serve communities and protect environmental quality.

At the University of Liverpool this three-year full-time programme includes a sandwich year with a work placement and a year abroad, giving you professional experience in a planning or geography-related organisation and an international perspective on how planning operates in different contexts. You will study urban and regional planning, development processes, environmental policy, spatial analysis, GIS, and the legislative and regulatory framework within which UK planning takes place, alongside human and physical geography content that contextualises planning decisions within wider environmental and social processes.

Liverpool itself is an important context for this study, as a city with a rich and complex history of urban development, post-industrial regeneration, and ongoing planning challenges. The university's strong connections to planning practitioners and local government provide relevant professional contacts.

Graduates go on to careers in urban and regional planning, local government, development consultancy, environmental consultancy, housing, infrastructure planning, and international development. The combination of geographical analysis and planning knowledge, reinforced by a placement year, is excellent preparation for professional practice and for postgraduate study in planning, urban design, or environmental management.