Unfortunately one of the worst subjects I've taken and I would not recommend taking it unless you absolutely have to (I am an urban planning major so this is a required prerequisite). I managed to get a decent grade (H2B) but my experience throughout the semester was one of the worst throughout my time at uni. The requirements for the projects (which is kind of one big project but split into smaller mini projects?) were extremely complex, confusing and we were given contradicting information from the teaching staff who seemed like they themselves didn't understand the requirements. Also, the grades for the earlier assignments were not released before the submission date of the subsequent assignments which would have been helpful for students to know what to improve/change as all the assignments are related. We were instructed to complete a weekly "pre-lecture" module on LMS which was useless as it consisted of the *exact same* information which was then repeated in the lectures. The tutorials were 3 hours long in which a majority of the time was spent on table/class discussions and completing worksheets on a miroboard, towards the end of the semester a large chunk of class time was devoted to clarifying the many misunderstandings and confusions related to the design projects as the instructions published on LMS differed to what was said in the lecture which differed to what was written in the subject guide which differed to what was relayed by the tutor. My tutorial group had 3 different tutors throughout the semester who each gave us a different set of instructions, additionally, one of the tutors would often refuse to help us/answer questions relating to the assignments as "there was no time during the tutorial" (reminder: the tutorial is 3 hours long) and would instruct us to send an email (this would turn into a lengthy email thread that could've been a 5 minute conversation). In my 1.5 yrs studying urban planning it was drilled into us in every subject the importance of on the ground site visits, and that they are a crucial step in creating optimal design that reflects real life conditions, local context and community needs. Ironically, while the urban design project in previous iterations of the subject were located on the university campus to enable these site visits, in recent years students are required to create a design for a community on an island of Tonga, which they obviously have no way of visiting, and is unaccessible even by google street view; students are forced to rely on a collection of images taken by the subject coordinator, and facebook images from locals. Overall, I had a very poor and frustrating experience with this subject and it has put me off from urban design as a whole

Anonymous, Semester 2, 2025