Place, Community and Urban Design

Overview

A sense of place, community, and urban design are core the experience of living in a city. For anyone who plans, designs, or studies urban spaces, community engagement is becoming an increasingly fundamental principle in the development of more sustainable urban neighbourhoods and cities.

This course explores the significance and impact of place-making, assessing past and current practices to create neighbourhoods that promote economic and social interaction, as well as environmental and civic well-being. Key concerns such as the changing role of high streets, low traffic neighbourhoods, and the importance of nature in the city are just a few of topics which provide deeper insights into everyday urban living, and generate lively debate.

Principles of urban design will be explained so that students can assess for themselves how working with residents and communities might generate more sustainable forms of urban living. Case studies drawn from global and contemporary contexts will enable students to assess the design and delivery of current urban developments, considering place-making as a guiding principle.

This course is part of a bundle of three complementary but independent online courses, additionally including Sustainable Cities: An Introduction and Cities in the Global South.


This course combines online study with a weekly 1-hour live webinar led by your tutor. Find out more about how our short online courses are taught.


Programme details

This course begins on the 15 January 2026 which is when course materials are made available to students. Students should study these materials in advance of the first live meeting which will be held on 22 January 2026 (UK time).

  1. What is community?
  2. Introducing urban design
  3. What is place-making?
  4. Urban history, architecture, and place-making
  5. Community engagement
  6. What makes a successful high street?
  7. Low Traffic Neighbourhoods
  8. Exploring retrofitting for making cities sustainable
  9. Nature and place
  10. Designing neighbourhoods: concluding considerations

Certification

Credit Application Transfer Scheme (CATS) points 

Coursework is an integral part of all online courses and everyone enrolled will be expected to do coursework. All those enrolled on an online course are registered for credit and will be awarded CATS points for completing work at the required standard.

See more information on CATS points

Digital credentials

All students who pass their final assignment will be eligible for a digital Certificate of Completion. Upon successful completion, you will receive a link to download a University of Oxford digital certificate. Information on how to access this digital certificate will be emailed to you after the end of the course. The certificate will show your name, the course title and the dates of the course you attended. You will be able to download your certificate or share it on social media if you choose to do so. 

Please note that assignments are not graded but are marked either pass or fail. 

Fees

Description Costs
Course Fee £360.00

Funding

If you are in receipt of a UK state benefit, you are a full-time student in the UK or a student on a low income, you may be eligible for a reduction of 50% of tuition fees. Please see the below link for full details:

Concessionary fees for short courses

Tutors

Dr Matthew Hardy

Dr Matthew Hardy is an architect and architectural historian working at the Prince's Foundation for Building Community. Matthew trained as an architect at the University of Adelaide, South Australia, holds a PhD in architectural history from the University of Wales, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. His PhD research, based at the Prince of Wales's Institute of Architecture, London, was a study of Hippocratic attitudes to climate and their influence on house planning in the classical tradition. Matthew has lectured and published widely, most recently editing the book The Venice Charter Revisited in 2011, and has taught on both course work and summer programmes, as a Visiting Professor at the University of Notre Dame, and Lecturer at the University of South Australia. He holds a Ph.D. in Architectural History (Wales), and a Bachelor of Architecture (Adelaide), where he practiced as an architect for 15 years. Matthew is co-founder and co-editor of Journal of Urbanism, published by Routledge.

Dr David Howard

Dr David Howard is an Associate Professor in Sustainable Urban Development and Fellow of Kellogg College. He was previously a Senior Lecturer in the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh, following postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford, the City University of New York and the University of Melbourne. Outwith the University, he is a member of the Latin American and Caribbean Panel at the British Academy and a CNRS Associate at the Centre Afriques dans le MondeSciences Po Bordeaux. David has researched a number of areas relating to the contemporary Caribbean and Latin America, with a specific focus on urban neighbourhoods, migration, socially sustainable development, and basic service provision and housing. His current research interests as an urban geographer focus on access to basic services in low-income, informal neighbourhoods in Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, following periods of urban violence and during points at which community-driven reconstruction projects have emerged.

Course aims

This course aims to:

  • Develop an understanding of the theories and practice of place-making, urban design and community engagement
  • Assess the relevance of place-making, urban design and community engagement for sustainable urban development
  • Embed critical perspectives on the academic scholarship relating to urban design

Teaching methods

This course takes place over 10 weeks, with a weekly learning schedule and weekly live webinar held on Microsoft Teams. Shortly before a course commences, students are provided with access to an online virtual learning environment, which houses the course content, including video lectures, complemented by readings or other study materials. Working through these materials over the course of the week will prepare students for a weekly 1-hour live webinar you will share with your expert tutor and fellow students. All courses are structured to amount to 100 study hours, so that on average, you should set aside 10 hours a week for study. Although the course finishes after 10 weeks, all learning materials remain available to all students for 12 months after the course has finished.

All courses are led by an expert tutor. Tutors guide students through the course materials as part of the live interactions during the weekly webinars. Tutors will also provide individualised feedback on your assignments. All online courses are taught in small student cohorts so that you and your peers will form a mutually supportive and vibrant learning community for the duration of the course. You will learn from your fellow students as well as from your tutor, and they will learn from you.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course students will be expected to:

  1. Have developed a foundational knowledge of key theories and practices relevant to place-making, urban design and community engagement.
  2. Have enhanced their knowledge of, and evaluated the notion of place-making from a range of theoretical and practical approaches
  3. Are aware of how to evaluate practical evidence and scholarship relating to urban design, and how to communicate this knowledge

Assessment methods

You will be set two pieces of work for the course. The first of 500 words is due halfway through your course. This does not count towards your final outcome but preparing for it, and the feedback you are given, will help you prepare for your assessed piece of work of 1,500 words due at the end of the course. The assessed work is marked pass or fail.

Application

Please use the 'Book now' button on this page. Alternatively, please complete an enrolment form.

Level and demands

This course is open to all and no prior knowledge is required.

This course is offered at FHEQ Level 4 (i.e. first year undergraduate level), and you will be expected to engage in independent study in preparation for your assignments and for the weekly webinar. This may take the form, for instance, of reading and analysing set texts, responding to questions or tasks, or preparing work to present in class. Our 10-week Short Online Courses come with an expected total commitment of 100 study hours, including those spent in live webinars.

English Language Requirements

We do not insist that applicants hold an English language certification, but warn that they may be at a disadvantage if their language skills are not of a comparable level to those qualifications listed on our website. If you are confident in your proficiency, please feel free to enrol. For more information regarding English language requirements please follow this link: https://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/about/english-language-requirements

IT requirements

Any standard web browser can be used to access course materials on our virtual learning environment, but we recommend Google Chrome. We also recommend that students join the live webinars on Microsoft Teams using a laptop or desktop computer rather than a phone or tablet due to the limited functionality of the app on these devices.