Careers › Built environment

How to become a Urban & Regional Planner

Plans how towns and cities grow - housing, transport, public space.

This needs more than the degree

Registration as a professional planner (with SACPLAN) generally follows further experience and board requirements after your degree – check the current rules with SACPLAN.

What does a Urban & Regional Planner actually do?

More about this career

Works on how towns and cities actually grow – zoning, housing, transport routes, public space – usually for a municipality, a government department or a planning consultancy. It’s part technical (maps, data, regulations) and part political, since plans go through public participation and council approval.

Where this degree can take you

  • Transport Planner
  • GIS Analyst
  • Housing Policy Analyst
  • Environmental Planner

This is our general description of the role and related jobs, not from an official source – it’s here to give you a fuller picture, not as a careers-counselling guarantee.

Not from an official source

Subjects that usually help

  • Mathematics
  • Geography (helpful)

This is our general guidance about which school subjects suit this career. It is not an admission requirement and not from an official source – the real requirements are on the degrees below.

Not from an official source

Where to check this yourself

What the degrees we’ve captured actually ask for

  • Mathematics – asked for by 1 of 1 degrees

Counted from the requirements below (an “or” alternative counts for each subject named). Each degree links to the page it came from.

Degrees that lead here

1 degree at 1 university. More are added as we verify them.

University of the Witwatersrand

From an older document

Urban & Regional Planning

Engineering & the Built Environment · 3 years

Wits APS 36 points

  • English: level 5 if it is your Home Language, level 5 if it is your First Additional Language
  • Mathematics: level 5 (60% or more)

This figure comes from the Wits schools-liaison Grade 12 guide, which is headed for 2026 entry. We have not yet found a 2027 course-finder page confirming it, so treat it as the most recent official figure rather than a confirmed 2027 one.

Source: View the official page (wits.ac.za) (opens the official page) · 2027 intake

Are your marks enough?

Put your subjects in once and we’ll check them against every degree above – scored each university’s own way.

What do I qualify for?