Mysuru: With a growing demand for rural and urban planners to design towns, the University of Mysore which is celebrating its centennial, has decided to introduce bachelor and masters courses in planning. This is the first of its kind of course which will be introduced by the varsity in the state.

The varsity had an architecture course at its University School of Design for the past 16 years. At present, there are 280 students studying architecture. The varsity was offering non-regular planning courses under the Institute of Development Studies (IDS).

To broaden its horizon by introducing new academic and extension programmes, the varsity decided to start a planning course parallel to architecture under a single roof. As a first step, the varsity has renamed the University School of Design as School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) from this academic year.

Along with bachelor and masters of architecture, it introduced a four-year course in Bachelor of Planning (B.Plan), a two-year Master of Planning (M.Plan) course and PhD programmes. Those who passed Class 12 exams can opt for either architecture or planning by passing the National Aptitude Test for Architecture (NATA).

The planning course will have specialization in environmental planning, housing, regional planning, transport planning, urban planning, building engineering, landscape architecture and other topics.

There are 38 colleges - both private and government -- most of which are affiliated to the Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) and National Council for Architecture which offer only the architecture course. But the UoM is the first to introduce planning along with architecture.

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