Regional science and regional planning deal with the analysis and solution of spatial planning problems on the regional level. Education within the Master's program is aimed at enabling graduates to identify and analyze concrete regional science problems. Moreover, the graduates are to be capable of developing and implementing adequate spatial planning solutions. For this, they need knowledge of regional science and its basic sciences of ecology, economics, and sociology as well as knowledge of tools to analyze regional structures, developments, and spatial use conflicts. Special regional science and regional planning problems in developing or threshold countries as well as in transition countries, the countries of origin of most of the students, represent one focus of the program.
The studies are to enable the graduates to analyze spatial use conflicts in the context of social, ecological, and economic developments across all disciplines, to develop solutions, and to implement them with appropriate management instruments.
Graduates should have developed a critical awareness of regional science and planning problems of their home countries. They are to be able to recognize and to prognosticate the interdisciplinary complexity, cause-and-effect relationships, and consequences of regional planning problems. In analyzing the problems, they are to be able to independently apply quantitative and qualitative regional science methods. Moreover, they are to be able to critically assess other experiences gained in different regions. The graduates are to develop objective and consistent solutions and to explain them to different target groups in a reproducible and understandable way. In addition, they are to be capable of deriving solution concepts in a participative manner and to enforce and implement them under the respective regional conditions.
With the skills imparted by the curriculum of the program, graduates are qualified for work in the administration, in consulting offices, or at universities in the area of urban and regional planning as well as in national and international regional policy.
