The Master of Community Planning and Development offers an intellectually challenging course of study that combines academic rigor with applied practice. Taught by scholars with professional planning backgrounds and practitioners with expertise in planning, urban design, economics and community development, you will deepen your knowledges about social and environmental planning, as well as the factors affecting planning outcomes such as governance, economic development, demographic trends, cultural transition, and community negotiation and mediation. As experiential learning is a key component of this course, you will work with communities, private industry and government agencies across metropolitan, regional and rural areas, with the potential to study overseas. Under the guidance of planning staff, you will also have the opportunity to conduct a significant independent project, so you can examine a topic of your particular interest in greater depth. As such, you will extend your knowledge in governance, spatial, social and environmental planning, urban design, and economic development. Students with a related undergraduate degree, the opportunity to refine and extend their existing knowledge and skills in planning, and students from other disciplines will achieve the competencies required to work within planning and associate professions. The course consists of two years full-time study (totalling 240 credit points) or equivalent part-time. Delivery is flexible and options exist for partly online subjects and for some study options at Bendigo and Melbourne campuses. Students will be able to tailor their subject choices beyond disciplinary cores, and this will largely involve opening up existing subjects to cross-disciplinary enrolments (with major assessment tasks tailored to disciplines of origin) and opening up Masters to travel abroad, work integrated learning, and exchange options that have hitherto been denied at the Masters level.