URBPLAN701: pass the exams, not just read the notes
Your complete guide to University of Auckland's urban planning contexts course. See where the marks are, work real practice questions, and study with an AI tutor that knows URBPLAN701.
Sia generates URBPLAN701 practice questions, walks through what is a city and philosophies step by step, and quizzes you on the material the exam weights most heavily.
Sharpen your argument
An exam question asks: 'Rational planning has been criticised as both technically inadequate and politically naive. Discuss with reference to at least one alternative planning rationale.' Which opening move sets up the strongest answer?
Read what the question actually asks. There are two distinct critiques, technical inadequacy and political naivety, plus a requirement to bring in at least one alternative rationale. An answer that treats these as one undifferentiated complaint has already lost structure marks.
Separate the two critiques and attach evidence to each. Technical inadequacy concerns bounded information and the impossibility of full evaluation; political naivety concerns the assumption of a unitary public interest and the invisibility of power. These are different objections with different literatures.
Use the alternative rationale as a test rather than a topic change. Social justice planning is interesting here precisely because it answers the political critique directly while inheriting some of the technical problem, and saying so demonstrates the comparative judgement a Level 9 answer is marked on.
The weaker choice: Option D is the most common failure: abandoning the question to write a prepared essay on the alternative rationale. The question asks you to discuss criticisms of rational planning using an alternative as a reference point, not to substitute one topic for another. Option B loses time on throat-clearing generality, and option C mistakes chronology for argument, which under closed-book exam conditions costs the minutes that should have gone to analysis. watch this!
One exam decides 50% of your grade. Controlled assessment: closed book, lockdown browser. This whole page is built around that.
Overview
What URBPLAN701 is, and where it sits
URBPLAN 701 is a Level 9 service course that four University of Auckland masters programmes pass through: urban planning, architecture, urban design and heritage conservation. That mixed audience shapes the course, which has to introduce the city, the planning profession and research method to students arriving from quite different first degrees.
the prescription covers an introduction to the city, urban planning and sustainability; professional roles, practices and values; and the introduction and application of critical quantitative and qualitative research skills and methods for urban planning. In practice the semester runs on two tracks. An early methods track carries you through research design, literature review and quantitative and qualitative skills, feeding the research proposal. A longer substantive track runs from city origins and the evolution of urban life through modern planning, utopian theory, property rights, urban design, rational planning, social justice, globalisation and contemporary practice.
The assessment is entirely written: a 20% research proposal, a 30% reflective essay and a 50% final exam. The exam is a closed-book invigilated digital sitting delivered through a lockdown browser, with essay-style questions testing research understanding, critical reasoning and depth. It explicitly excludes the research methods component assessed in the proposal.
Always treat your own course outline and the exam timetable as authoritative.
Difficulty & time commitment
Is URBPLAN701 hard, and how much time does it take?
URBPLAN701 is manageable if you keep a weekly rhythm and treat the back half as the main event. The pattern is consistent: it starts gently and steepens, and the heaviest assessment is the part that separates grades.
The difficulty curve and the assessment weighting point the same way: the back half is harder and worth more. Front-loading effort there is the highest-return decision in the course.
Is this course for you
Who tends to do well, and who tends to struggle
You will likely do well if
- You read for argument rather than for coverage, and you can state what a given author claims and what would count as evidence against it.
- You start the research proposal early. It falls around Week 4, before the substantive lectures have built much momentum, and late starts show.
- You build a small set of well-understood positions you can deploy under closed-book conditions, rather than broad notes you cannot consult.
- You are comfortable writing to an argument structure under time pressure, since 80% of the grade is essay-form.
You may struggle if
- You revise the research methods material for the exam. It is explicitly excluded and assessed through the proposal instead.
- You treat the reading list as optional. This is a literature-driven course and answers without named sources cannot reach the top band.
- You prepare set-piece essays and try to fit them to whatever question appears, which is the most reliable way to lose marks in an essay exam.
- You come from a design background and expect studio-style assessment. There is no design component here.
- For each theme, prepare a position, its strongest counter-argument and two nameable sources. Depth on a few themes beats thin coverage of all of them under closed-book conditions.
- Practise turning an exam prompt into a structure in five minutes: define, separate the claims, sequence the evidence, then write. The planning is what distinguishes the top answers.
- Use Aotearoa New Zealand material deliberately. Te Ao Maori and Te Ao Pakeha perspectives and local infrastructure examples are distinctive to this course and reward specific engagement.
- Make the reflective essay genuinely reflective. It asks you to position yourself relative to the literature, and answers that only summarise the reading underperform.
Syllabus
The 12 topics, lecture by lecture
The exam-weight marker on each topic shows where the marks concentrate. The amber topics carry the highest exam weight.
T1 · Introduction and research design
Farthing, Research Design in Urban PlanningCourse aims and resources, and how a research question becomes a workable design. Sets up the research proposal.
T2 · The literature review
FarthingLocating, reading and synthesising a body of literature into an argument rather than a summary.
T3 · Quantitative and qualitative research skills
FarthingThe strengths, weaknesses and appropriate uses of each methodological family in planning research and practice.
T4 · What is a city, city origins and the evolution of urban life
LeGates, Stout and Caves, The City Reader 8th edDefining the urban, the emergence of cities, and how urban life has changed with them.
T5 · Philosophies, technologies and modern urban planning
The City ReaderThe intellectual and technological conditions that produced planning as a modern profession.
T6 · Utopian theory and practice, and civics
The City ReaderUtopian traditions in planning, and Patrick Geddes and the ecological planning lineage.
T7 · Paris and Chicago
The City ReaderTwo formative case cities and what each contributed to planning thought.
T8 · Te Ao Maori and Te Ao Pakeha in planning
Course lecture materialsMaori and Pakeha worldviews and their implications for planning practice in Aotearoa New Zealand.
T9 · Property rights and urban design
The City ReaderHow property rights structure what planning can do, and the urban design response.
T10 · Rational planning and social justice theory
The City ReaderThe rational planning model and its critics, and social justice as a planning rationale.
T11 · Globalisation, neoliberalism, sustainability and the wellbeing economy
The City ReaderContemporary economic framings of urban policy and the sustainability agenda.
T12 · Tokyo, contemporary planning theory and professional practice
The City ReaderLife in the Tokyo megacity, current planning theories, professional practice and planning futures.
How it's assessed
Assessment structure
| Component | Weight | Format & timing |
|---|---|---|
| Final examination | 50% | Mode D invigilated digital exam delivered through the Inspera Integrity Browser with lockdown. Closed book, no calculators. Essay-style questions testing research understanding, critical reasoning and depth. Excludes the research methods component assessed in Assignment 1. University of Auckland Semester 1 examination period, on the City Campus. Controlled assessment: closed book, lockdown browser. |
| Assignment 2: Reflective urban planning essay | 30% | A reflective essay engaging the planning literature and the course themes. Second half of semester. Uncontrolled assessment. |
| Assignment 1: Urban research proposal | 20% | A research proposal on a specific aspect of physical or social infrastructure in Auckland, submitted online via Canvas. Around Week 4. Uncontrolled assessment. |
- An overall pass is required. No separate hurdle rule appears in the course materials.
- The exam is a closed-book digital sitting under lockdown, so nothing can be looked up. Because it explicitly excludes the research methods content assessed in the research proposal, your exam revision should concentrate on the substantive urban and planning theory lectures rather than on methodology.
This is an exam-cram course. With the exams at 50% of the grade and the final examination alone at 50%, your result is overwhelmingly decided by how well you perform under time pressure. Controlled assessment: closed book, lockdown browser.
Final exam timing: During the University of Auckland Semester 1 examination period, on the City Campus. Confirm the exact date and venue on your exam timetable.
How to actually pass it
A weekly rhythm, two checklists, and the traps to avoid
The course rewards consistency over cramming, and practice over re-reading. Here is the loop that works, then what to have nailed before each exam.
The weekly loop
Before the mid-semester checklist
- Turn a broad interest in Auckland infrastructure into a specific, answerable research question.
- Write a literature review that builds an argument rather than listing summaries.
- State when a quantitative approach is appropriate, when a qualitative one is, and justify the choice for your proposal.
- Present a research design where question, method and evidence are coherent with one another.
Before the final heaviest topics
- Cover the substantive lectures rather than the methods lectures, since the exam excludes the research methods component.
- Be able to define and criticise the rational planning model and set at least one alternative rationale against it.
- Prepare the Aotearoa New Zealand material, including Te Ao Maori and Te Ao Pakeha perspectives and property rights.
- Have positions ready on globalisation, neoliberalism, sustainability and the wellbeing economy, with named sources you can deploy without notes.
The mistakes that cost marks
Answering the prepared essay instead of the question. Essay exams reward responsiveness. A well-written answer to a question that was not asked scores below a rougher answer that engages the actual prompt.
Revising methods for the exam. The exam explicitly excludes the research methods component. Time spent revising it is time taken from the theory content that is examined.
Writing without named sources. This is a literature-driven masters course. Answers that make sensible claims without attributing them cannot reach the distinction band.
Starting the proposal late. Assignment 1 is due early, around Week 4, and is worth 20%. It is designed to be built across the first three methods lectures rather than written in a weekend.
Teaching team
Who teaches URBPLAN701
The bios below are factual. We do not rate lecturers; any star ratings are submitted by students who have taken URBPLAN701.
Elizabeth Aitken Rose
Coordinates, lectures and examines URBPLAN 701 in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Auckland.
Clare Feeney
Sustainability strategist who delivers the guest lecture on the wellbeing economy.
Teaching team as listed in public course information. AskSia does not rate lecturers; star ratings are submitted by students who have taken URBPLAN701.
Formula & concept sheet
The vocabulary and formulas you must own
- Rational planning model
- The procedural model in which planners identify goals, generate alternatives, evaluate them against criteria, then select and implement. The reference point most planning theory argues with.
- Research design
- The coherent alignment of research question, method and evidence, such that the method chosen can actually answer the question asked.
- Literature review
- A synthesis that situates a research question within an existing body of work and identifies the gap it addresses, as distinct from a sequence of summaries.
- Qualitative method
- An approach generating non-numerical evidence such as interviews, observation and documents, suited to questions about meaning, process and context.
- Quantitative method
- An approach generating numerical evidence suited to questions about magnitude, distribution and association across a population.
- Utopian planning tradition
- The lineage of planning thought that proceeds from an imagined ideal settlement and works backward to the interventions that would realise it.
- Ecological planning
- The tradition associated with Patrick Geddes that treats a settlement as inseparable from its region and environment, surveying before planning.
- Property rights
- The bundle of legally recognised entitlements over land that constrains what planning can require, permit or prevent.
- Urban design
- The practice concerned with the physical form and experience of the space between buildings, sitting between architecture and planning.
- Social justice rationale
- The argument that planning should be evaluated by its distributive consequences, particularly for those with least power in the process.
- Neoliberal urbanism
- The framing of urban policy around market mechanisms, competition and deregulation, and the critical literature examining its effects on cities.
- Wellbeing economy
- A policy framing that evaluates economic activity by its contribution to collective wellbeing and environmental limits rather than by output alone.
Common acronyms: CBD · GIS · IIB · NGO · RMA.
Set texts
The prescribed reading
The syllabus references map straight onto these.
The City Reader, 8th edition (2025)
LeGates, Stout and Caves (eds).
Research Design in Urban Planning: A Student's Guide
Stuart M. Farthing.
Where it fits
Prerequisites, related courses & why it matters
No prerequisites or restrictions. URBPLAN 701 is a 15-point Level 9 course with a standard load of 150 hours, made up of about 33 contact hours and 117 hours of self-directed study. It serves the masters programmes in urban planning, architecture, urban design and heritage conservation. There is no teaching in Week 12, which is Crit and Studio Week.
Your URBPLAN701 study toolkit
Study the course with Sia, not just read about it
Each tool already knows URBPLAN701: your syllabus, your texts, and where the marks are. Grouped by how you study, from first contact to exam week.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Is URBPLAN 701 hard?
It rates moderately hard. The reading is manageable and there is little mathematics, but 80% of the grade is essay-form work at masters level, including a closed-book essay exam. Grades depend on argument quality and command of the literature rather than on recall, which is what makes the top band difficult to reach.
What is the exam format?
It is a Mode D invigilated digital exam sat on the City Campus through the Inspera Integrity Browser with a lockdown browser. It is closed book with no calculators, and the questions are essay-style, testing research understanding, critical reasoning and depth of understanding.
Does the exam cover the research methods material?
No. The exam explicitly excludes the research methods component, which is assessed through the 20% research proposal instead. This is worth knowing early, because it means your exam revision should focus on the substantive urban and planning theory content.
What is the research proposal about?
Assignment 1 is a research proposal on a specific aspect of physical or social infrastructure in Auckland, submitted online through Canvas. It is worth 20% and falls early in the semester, which is why the first three lectures are given over to research design, literature review and methods.
What is the core text?
The City Reader, 8th edition (2025), edited by LeGates, Stout and Caves, published by Routledge and available online through the University of Auckland Library. Readings are organised per lecture through a Talis reading list. Farthing's Research Design in Urban Planning is recommended for the methods component.
How do I prepare for a closed-book essay exam?
Prepare arguments rather than notes. For each major theme, know the position, its strongest criticism, and one or two sources you can name and use. Since nothing can be looked up, what matters is having a small number of well-understood positions you can deploy flexibly rather than broad shallow coverage.
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