Master of Planning
Stacy Florendo's Tri Sunnyside project aims to create a mixed-use space featuring retail, residential, and community gathering areas, with a focus on sustainable living. How will you change the world?
Become a changemaker in urban and regional planning
Create places that work and master planning for growth, safety, and livability
Are you concerned about contemporary urban and municipal issues like housing affordability, climate resilience, and sustainable mobility? Today's planners are actively redesigning the places we live, work and play to balance rapid population growth with the need to reduce carbon footprints, alleviate traffic, and create equitable, walkable communities. Our Master of Planning (MPlan) program offers a comprehensive curriculum that blends theory with practical experience, equipping you with the skills needed to tackle the pressing challenges of urban and rural development. You'll engage in hands-on projects, collaborate with community stakeholders, and learn from experienced professionals in the field. Upon graduation, you'll be ready to lead the way in shaping resilient, sustainable, and inclusive environments, making a meaningful impact on the communities you serve.
Are you ready to shape the future of our communities?
Get ready to tackle contemporary challenges
- The housing crisis is a major focus, with planners working to increase density and ease zoning restrictions to combat soaring property costs.
- Climate change and resiliency are also top priorities, as urban planners design cities to accommodate extreme weather, reduce urban heat islands, and meet net-zero emission targets.
- The concept of the 15-minute city is gaining traction, shifting focus from car-centric sprawl to walkable neighbourhoods where residents can access daily needs, work, and recreation within a 15-minute walk or bike ride.
- Additionally, public transit and infrastructure lag behind urban growth, necessitating upgrades to aging infrastructure and expanded public transit networks to reduce congestion.
If you are looking to address the pressing challenges facing cities and regions today while shaping the places where people live, work, and connect through innovative design, the MPlan program is for you.
Uncover the unique elements of our MPlan program
As a planner, you will be an active changemaker, shaping communities that are sustainable, resilient, and responsive to future challenges. In the MPlan program, you’ll learn to connect policy and planning decisions to their spatial outcomes while developing skills in data analytics, design, and visual communication. You’ll collaborate in interdisciplinary teams, often engaging directly with community associations to address real-world planning issues.
- Design and Studio-Based Learning: You’ll engage in experiential learning through problem identification and design interventions, working on real or simulated planning projects under the guidance of instructors.
- Interdisciplinary Collaboration: You’ll collaborate with students in architecture and landscape architecture, reflecting the importance of cross-disciplinary work to professional planning practice.
- Focus on Sustainability: You’ll explore the complexities of built environments, ensuring your designs consider social, economic, and ecological impacts.
- Real-World Problem Solving: You’ll learn through legal and governmental frameworks, incorporating real-world planning contexts into your education.
In the MPlan program, you’ll gain the skills and insights necessary to become a leader in the planning field, prepared to address tomorrow’s challenges.
Turn your passion for planning into a successful career
Our MPlan program offers comprehensive training across key areas of planning practice, from housing, transportation, and social services to urban design, environmental systems, policy, development finance, and project management.
Open the door to a world of opportunities
As a nationally accredited program with an international scope, our MPlan equips you with an integrated skill set to make a meaningful impact in communities around the world.
Urban planning matters because it lets us turn ideas about better cities into real places where people can live, connect, and thrive.”
MPlan alum
Explore the MPlan program
Planners are active changemakers, shaping communities and cities that are responsive to the future’s challenges and opportunities.
The MPlan program teaches students how to understand and communicate the connection between policy and planning decisions and the spatial forms they create on the ground. Students learn design and graphic skills and work closely in cross-professional, interdisciplinary teams – often directly with community associations – to explore planning issues and the role of professional planners.
DESIGN AND STUDIO-BASED
‘Studio’ is a teaching and learning format that engages students in experiential learning through problem identification, analysis, and the design of interventions for preferred outcomes. A traditional part of design education in architecture and landscape architecture it puts students in real or simulated planning project situations where instructors engage with students in problem solving that may result in physical or spatial design outcomes or policy and land use planning outcomes.
INTERDISCIPLINARITY
The professions of planning, architecture and landscape architecture share common ground in the creation of the built form and practice in the context of constructed human environments. Working together in interdisciplinary teams is a necessity for professional success and has been one of our School's core educational values since its founding.
SUSTAINABILITY
Constructed human environments are complex and multi-faceted systems with social, cultural, technological, ecological, and economic flows and inter-relationships. The challenge for the professions of planning, architecture, and landscape architecture is to ensure that built forms do not create social, economic, and ecological conflicts and trade-offs.
REAL WORLD PROBLEM SOLVING
Professional practice means working with people within legal and governmental institutional frameworks. It is vital that professional practice education be placed in that context. Program courses and studios incorporate the real world context of practice as part of a student’s experiential learning.
As a professional planner, you will work primarily in municipal governments or private sector firms focused on land use planning and urban development in both urban and rural contexts. You will develop expertise across areas such as housing, transportation, social services, policy and regulatory compliance, development finance, project management, urban design, environmental planning (water, air, and biodiversity), development approvals, area structure planning, urban redevelopment, and community engagement.
In your role, you may collaborate with elected officials, engineers, community associations, private developers, financial managers, consultants, lawyers, and members of the public. Planning has traditionally focused on guiding land development and land use to support economic and social well-being and to create healthy, safe communities. Increasingly, the field also plays a central role in advancing equity and social justice. It is also shaped by the complexities of growth management in rapidly changing urban and rural regions.
A career in professional planning offers diverse opportunities with an international scope. You will engage with challenges such as sustainability, climate change adaptation, low-impact development, affordable housing, technological and demographic change, economic uncertainty, and public health and safety. These challenges will shape your practice and open pathways across sectors and regions.
For more information, please visit the Canadian Institute of Planners website.
Stay Connected
Stay informed with program-specific updates, including upcoming events and info sessions, career pathways, curriculum highlights, and the latest news about SAPL.
Explore innovative design solutions created by MPlan graduates
How will you change the world?
The Deck by the Bow at Inglewood - Arvind Gopalakrishnan - MPlan
The Look Out - Lilit Houlder - Site Planning Studio
River Flows In You – Chang Liu – M1 – Site Planning Studio
Message from the Associate Dean, Enrica Dall’Ara
“Planning is not just about shaping spaces; it's about shaping futures. As you embark on this journey, remember: the world needs your vision, your skills, and your commitment to create communities that thrive.”
Come design the future with us.
And change the world from the heart of the city.
In January 2026, we moved to a vibrant downtown location to enhance the educational journeys of our students and researchers while fostering collaboration with our professional community, the City of Calgary, and beyond.