Overview

The Advanced Landscape Planning and Management MSc is an innovative one-year postgraduate programme. This course will provide you with the intellectual and practical skills required for effective landscape planning and management.

As a landscape planner or landscape manager, you will design, care for, and maintain the countryside, as well as urban and coastal landscapes. You will ensure that these landscapes meet the needs and aspirations of present and future owners, communities and users.

What you will learn on our Master’s will be relevant worldwide. You’ll develop the skills needed to tackle key challenges facing contemporary society:

• climate change
• species loss
• rapid urbanisation
• migration (human and non-human)
• social justice and belonging
• heritage restoration

This Advanced Landscape Planning and Management course is suitable for:

• graduates in other disciplines who wish to qualify as professional landscape planners and managers
• landscape planners or managers who want to secure an academic qualification
• those with international landscape qualifications (or related disciplines) who wish to pursue professional studies in the UK
• those interested in advanced level research in landscape planning, landscape management, and landscape studies

Important information

We’ve highlighted important information about your course. Please take note of any deadlines.

What you’ll learn

Our Advanced Landscape Planning and Management Master’s involves classroom-led and fieldwork-led learning.

This course will help you develop and demonstrate the ability to:

• think critically about planning and management in relation to long-term stewardship of landscapes
• understand the complexities of landscape issues and opportunities, applying knowledge from across the curriculum
• devise effective planning and management solutions to landscape problems
• respond creatively to complex landscape planning and management briefs
• generate well-considered proposals that show understanding of context, scale and time
• evaluate materials, processes and techniques and integrate these into feasible strategies
• understand how landscape has been conceptualised and theorised throughout history
• evaluate the philosophies, ideologies and critical positions which underpin different approaches to landscape research
• engage with complex ideas and a range of stakeholders

This course is intellectually stimulating. It builds on our staff’s international research reputation and teaching strengths in:

• climate crisis, green infrastructure and nature-based thinking
• interspecies relations
• critical social and political landscape approaches
• advanced landscape research skills

Newcastle University’s Centre for Research Excellence in Landscape creates a matchless environment for interdisciplinary research-informed teaching in landscape. Leading organisations, institutions and authorities responsible for managing landscapes provide additional input.

Modules

You will study modules on this course. A module is a unit of a course with its own approved aims and outcomes and assessment methods.

How you’ll learn

Your development

You’ll develop subject-specific professional and research skills, including:

• defining and critically analysing landscape problems, drawing on current research and knowledge
• collecting, synthesising and utilising evidence for effective and socio-ecologically-just landscape planning and management
• creating effective planning and management solutions to landscape problems
• articulating reasoned arguments, drawing on a range of information sources
• assessing the intersecting social and environmental complexities of landscape issues, constraints and opportunities
• ethical issues surrounding the creation, planning and management of landscapes
• high-level academic research skills in relation to landscape projects
• advanced  research methods for understanding the needs of, and engaging communities

You will develop specialist practical skills, including:

• conducting site planning and site assessments
• landscape management and green infrastructure planning and maintenance strategies
• site-led management and maintenance resolutions and their implementation
• contributing to detailed assessments such as environmental assessments
• applying policy documents, legislation and good practice for long-term landscape stewardship
• budgets and resource assessment
• critical approaches to the rationales and techniques applied to the preparation and deliverance of landscape planning and management solutions
• the ability to ‘read’ landscapes, past, present and future

In addition, you will gain valuable transferable skills. These include project management, presentation skills and communication with both specialist and non-specialist audiences. You will also develop important self-management skills such as setting priorities and time management.

Your future

What can you do with an Advanced Landscape Planning and Management MSc?

This Master’s course will prepare you for an exciting career in landscape planning and landscape management. You will be ready to pursue dynamic job roles in diverse fields. You could go on to plan or manage:

• national parks
• coastlines
• heritage sites
• nature reserves
• environmental or forestry agencies
• wilding projects
• seascapes/water management

You will also be well placed to continue your studies at PhD level.

Our industry links

We have strong governmental, charitable, and industry links with:

• local governments
• National Parks (especially in the North East)
• Northumberland Wildlife Trust
• the Environment Agency
• Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA)
• Community Forest
• European Forum on Urban Forestry
• Clearing House
• Natural England
• The National Trust
• Scottish Natural Heritage
• the European Commission
• Swiss Peace

We also have long-term sustained relationships with professional bodies including:

• The Landscape Institute
• The Landscape Research Group
• The Royal Town Planning Institute
• The Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers

Entry requirements

The entrance requirements below apply to 2025 entry.