Physical environment is the platform for most of the human activities. In order to promote liveability, economic feasibility and ecological sustainability in the physical environment, planning, ranging from a narrow lane to a large region is of unquestionable importance. In the backdrop of the scarcity of modifiable land and lack of resources, planning looks into managing human activities by putting social, political, cultural, economic and technological factors in an interdisciplinary framework. The resultant knowledge leads the integrated endeavours toward developing a harmonized physical environment for the future. Urban and Rural Planning (URP) Discipline, the pioneer planning school in the country for undergraduate level education, was established in Khulna University in 1991 with a view to producing qualified planners that Bangladesh severely lacks. It is one of the four disciplines with which Khulna University started its academic programmes.

URP is an interdisciplinary field of study which is aimed at producing skilled practitioners imbued with the most up-to-date planning techniques. Now, URP Discipline has its alumni in the profession, since 90s, contributing for a wide range of area including physical planning, social development and technological innovation all over the world.

Urban and Rural Planning discipline is engaged in academic learning and research. It offers a four years Bachelor degree in Urban and Rural Planning (BURP), Master of Urban and Rural Planning (MURP), MPhil and PhD in Planning. The research as part of the academic degree explores wide range of planning agenda preferably with empirical evidences. The discipline has research collaboration with different national and international organizations, donors and universities e.g. Stuttgart University, Glasgow University, Auburn University, Michigan University, RCUK, USAID, SNV, UNDP, German Cooperation, RTDA and etc.