Fall 2025 Graduate Planning Timetable

The DRAFT Timetable below is subject to change ahead of the Aug 1st, 2025 registration schedule. 

Courses marked with an asterisk (*) are offered through affiliated departments. Please contact the host department for enrolment instructions.  

Geography & Planning students have priority enrolment for courses. Course enrolment for students from other departments is available online via Acorn on August 22, 2025.  

For JPG courses, the department does not require any forms from students outside the department – if space is available students are welcome to enroll using ACORN on August 22, 2025 (6 am ET). If space is not available, students will be added to the enrolment waitlist. If your home department requires a signature in order to approve your enrollment please send the form by email to graduate.geography@utoronto.ca (for JPG courses) or wright@geog.utoronto.ca (for PLA courses).

Core PLA courses are restricted to planning students only. Priority for all other PLA courses will be for students in the planning program. Students from other programs must contact the department for permission to enrol – we will consider requests starting mid-August.  

Students can access course materials on Quercus.  

Building locations for STG can be found on the STG campus map. 

Fall session courses begin on September 2, 2025 and end on December 2, 2025.

Concentration column indicates the MScPl Concentration to which the elective may be applied; students are welcome to consult the concentration advisors about the relationship between a particular course and a concentration, if they wish to take courses outside the department toward completion of their concentrations, and/or if a particular course is not being offered and they wish to find a substitute appropriate for a concentration. 

Course Descriptions 

PLA1101H Planning History, Thought and Practice 

This course introduces master’s students to key ideas in planning history, thought and practice. We explore concepts and practices across social, economic, environmental, urban design and transportation planning. We consider longstanding debates in planning such as those around expertise, knowledge and process, and the varied paths planners take to build a better city. Theory is grounded in case studies and historical examples and guest speakers working in planning help us think about these ideas in relation to practice. 

PLA1107Y Current Issues Paper 

Each student will prepare a planning report addressing a current planning issue in the student’s specialization. The topic will be formulated jointly by the student and a faculty advisor and written in consultation with professionals in the field. The final report will be presented to an evaluation panel of faculty and visiting professional planners. In preparation for the writing of the report, students will meet regularly during the fall term in order to develop further their ability to fashion practical and effective arguments. Practicing professionals will be invited to the class to participate in these sessions and to discuss strategies formulated in response to the professional challenges encountered.  

PLA1516H: Special Topics: Planning & Design for Community Power

This course examines how planning and urban design can help create alternative futures that centre community control and power. We begin with an introduction to how settler colonialism and colonial knowledge systems have established our present-day understandings of land, private property and ownership. And in turn, how this has tangibly affected planning and design outcomes and processes. Students will be invited to deconstruct this history to understand what anti-capitalist planning and design practice could be in today's land and property relations.

The task is to use your skills and motivations for planning and design towards eroding intersecting systems of oppression through practice. This class will introduce students to personal leadership development, and techniques in design engagement such as co-creation and shared governance. Assignments will emphasize practicing these skills while speculating what transformative planning and design practices could look like. Students will also learn from guest speakers, who are designers, architects, planners, community organizers and community engagement specialists.

The seminar is based in the Department of Geography and Planning and open to graduate students from all faculties and programs at the University of Toronto subject to the application process.

PLA1517 - Making Sense of Public Space: Qualitative Methods for Urban Designers

How do we know and understand a place? This course builds skills for questioning, analyzing, knowing, and understanding public space through qualitative (as opposed to quantitative) research methods. The class is intended for students with an interest in improving their abilities to measure and investigate the relationship between physical design and social change. 

Urban public spaces facilitate social cohesion, physical and mental wellbeing, economic development, aesthetic enhancement, and memorialization. They can also be exclusive, inaccessible, and unsafe. Our goal is to identify, examine, and measure the variety of ways that public spaces do-- or do not--contribute to the city and its varied populations using qualitative methods.

Traditional qualitative methods include interviews, participant observation and ethnography, focus groups, surveys, and various modes of documenting and recording spaces such as mapping and photography. Qualitative methods help us “make sense” and answer who, what, when, where, why, and how questions. These methods are political, flexible, and rigorous. They have the potential to be radical, and most importantly, they can help you see the world in new ways. 

Together, we will explore the theoretical underpinnings and techniques of qualitative research focusing on the urban environment and public spaces. Students will choose an urban site or public space of their choice in Toronto to explore throughout the semester using the aforementioned qualitative methods.

The structure of the class is based on four elements: (1) reading and classroom discussions about various qualitative methods, (2) studying and critiquing the design, methods, and analyses used in selected urban studies research, (3) completing fieldwork exercises that use the various methods to make sense of a local public space, and (4) writing and presenting a final case study of this urban environment including a reflexive account of one’s own experiences as a researcher.

PLA2000H Advanced Planning Theory 

In this course we collaboratively map the territory of planning theory, exploring and describing those areas of the theoretical landscape that resonate with your research and practice. We draw on interdisciplinary literature and philosophies, grounded in case studies. The role of the planning academic and our responsibility to urban issues are discussed. Themes of transformation, policy and power, representation and culture, displacement and inequity, public space and urban form, mobility and movement are woven throughout. 

PLA2001H Planning Colloquium 

This is a CR/NCR seminar series in which faculty members, students and invited speakers will present and discuss the findings of their current research. 

PLA1525H Urban, Regional and Community Economic Development 

This course surveys urban, regional, and community economic development theories and planning practices, with a focus on North America in comparative perspective. Coverage includes orthodox and neoclassical theories from economic geography, urban economics, and political science/sociology, which provide the rationale for people-centric, place-based, and institutionally-oriented economic development plans and policies. Heterodox and community-oriented alternatives are also examined. Using real-life cases, we review cluster strategies, enterprise zones/districts, labour and capital relocation incentives, regional and anchor institution strategies, workforce development systems, community benefit agreements, living wage policies, local hiring/procurement preferences, and community/cooperative ownership models.  

PLA1652H Introductory Studio in Urban Design and Planning 

This studio course introduces the basic principles and skills of urban design to students from various backgrounds by working through exercises of sketching, research and design involving such challenges of planning as housing, public space and transportation in their relation to the politics and aesthetics of urban form. 

PLA1656H Land Use Planning  

This course introduces students to the statutory and non-statutory components of the planning process, including issues and implications of various planning policies and tools, and the role and responsibilities of key stakeholders. The course provides students with a foundation in the planning framework in Ontario, through a review of the intent of legislation and policy, and a critical discussion of the application of policy to current issues and case studies. With an emphasis on several issues of relevance to municipalities in the Toronto region, it also reviews planning approaches from cities around the world. The course focuses on land-use planning but also explores other key considerations and issues in the planning process. 

JPG1170H Statistical Testing and Analysis 

This course advances important quantitative methods and techniques used in the analysis of empirical data in Geography, Planning and other Social Sciences. It aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of statistical methods for graduate students required to (i) quantify relations and dependencies between variables and (ii) conduct statistical tests in a variety of applications related to the Canadian urban system. The topics of the course include probability distributions, statistical testing and inference, as well as linear and some non-linear, simple and multiple regression and correlation techniques. The application of these methods through the use of statistical software (primarily SPSS) – both menu- and code-based – will also be part of the course. Canadian Census data comprising a large set of socio-economic variables for metropolitan/urban areas for the years 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016 will be the basis for analyses conducted in class and for the assignments. Students are required to have some background knowledge of research design, basic descriptive statistics, testing and regression analysis at the undergraduate level. The course will help students develop an intuitive, as well as a more formal understanding of these methods. Although formal language will be used, the course does not require in-depth mathematical knowledge.   

JPG1507H Housing Policy and Planning

This course examines how public policies help shape the housing affordability landscape in North American cities. The course will introduce students to housing concepts and provide an overview of the evolution of housing policy in Canada and the impacts of current landlord-tenant regimes. We will examine ‘wicked’ housing issues, such as the affordability crisis, gentrification and evictions, and the financialization of housing. We will also explore equitable development approaches, such as inclusionary zoning and community land trusts. When possible, experiential learning may be incorporated into the course and students will get the opportunity to work on a real-world housing research project.

JPG1516H Urban Problems 

Much of planning and urban thought more generally is implicitly or explicitly oriented around the idea of growth—growth allows cities to be managerial, gives them room for error, salves intra-constituency squabbles, etc.  In the face of decline, the most common planning or urban theoretical response is to engage in economic development (that is, to reignite growth).  But what about those cities (or sections of otherwise growing cities) that have declined in population or resources and remained healthy, pleasant, places to live?  Can we learn something from their experience that allows us to rethink the way that cities decline, or what the professional response to it should be?  What about those cities, conversely which retain an infrastructure footprint that was intended for a much larger city?  Can they be downsized in a planned way?  If so, what would such an effort (mobilizing the state to sponsor planned decline) mean for the bulk of urban theory that suggests that it is the state’s role to reignite growth?   

JPG1518H - Sustainability and Urban Communities

This course focuses on sustainability and communities and neighbourhoods in cities in North America and Europe, with some exploration of examples of community-based sustainability in cities in the global south. The intention of this course is to examine academic and policy discussion on urban sustainability and the contemporary context and future of urban communities, and will address socio-political dimensions of urban sustainability found in human geography and urban planning literatures, rather than focusing on physical or technical applications of sustainability principles.

JPG1522H - Production of Space

This seminar investigates articulations of aesthetic, technological and political forces in the production of space — understood as the triad of 'conceived space’, 'perceived space' and 'lived space,' following Henri Lefebvre's influential theorization in The Production of Space. With reference to intellectual resources drawn from several strands of critical theory, space figures here as something radically contested, and dialectically related to social relations. The work of artists, architects, planners, geographers, scientists, technocrats and politicians, along with influential conceptions such as 'modernism,' 'avant-garde,' 'culture industry,' 'spectacle,' 'alienation,' 'governmentality,' 'subjectivity,' 'ideology,' 'decolonization,' 'utopia,' and 'revolution' will feature prominently in this course, in order to theorize how space and society are co-produced, and why various political projects — capitalist, nationalist, fascist, colonial, socialist, feminist — are also spatial projects. As such, the prime objective of this course will be to develop critical-theoretical as well as conjunctural awareness of aesthetic, technological and political mediations of the socio-spatial dialectic — with special attention to the work of architects, urban designers, planners, and geographers in the context of subaltern citizens pursuing their 'right to the city.'

JPG1805H - Transnationalism, Diaspora and Gender

This seminar focuses on the politics of contemporary global migration processes with particular attention to the gender dimensions. It examines the geographic literature on transnationalism and diaspora to develop insight into the theoretical ramifications of critical political-economy, post-colonialism, post-structuralism, and feminism.

JPG1812Y - Planning for Change: Community Development in Practice

This is a full-year service-learning course that facilitates practical experience in community-engaged planning. Service-learning is a reciprocal work placement between students and community partners. Students are placed with a public or non-profit sector organization for one day per week, on average, from early October to late March to work in community development and planning. Placement organizations practice a range of planning-related work, including housing, transportation, social planning, and environmental initiatives. We meet as a class in a seminar format to support the students' work, reflect on theory and practice, and to learn from one another’s experiences. This placement can fulfil Master of Sciece in Planning students' internship requirement.

JPG1830H - Utopia/Dystopia

The term "Utopia" is a combination of the Greek words Eutopia (meaning 'good place') and Outopia (meaning 'no place'). This course explores classic and contemporary Utopian thought — in theory, literature, and practice — and will discuss the perils and pitfalls associated with the development of utopias (both imagined and "actually existing"). Our exploration of this topic will involve reading scholarly work within and outside geography, as well as examples of Utopian and dystopian literature. Key themes include how issues of social relation, ecological sustainability, governance, planning, and participation are addressed in Utopia(s).